LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



THE 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



BY 



^* 



eT w. emeeson. 



BOSTON: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

I 8 7 I. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

R. W. Emeksox, 

In the Clerk's Oflace of the District Court of the District of Massachuflettfc 



48 65 55 

AUG -6 1942 



CONTENTS. 



Pag« 

L Fate, 1 

n. Power, 43 

m. Wealth, 71 

IV. Culture, Ill 

V. Behavior, 145 

VI. Worship, 173 

Vn. Considerations bt the Wat, 213 

Vm. Beauty, 245 

IX. Illusions, 271 



L 
FATE. 



Delicate omens traced in air 
To the lone bard true witness bare; 
Birds witli auguries on their wings 
Chanted undeceiving things 
Him to beckon, him to warn; 
Well might then the poet scorn 
To learn of scribe or courier 
Hints writ in vaster character ; 
And on his mind, at dawn of day, 
Soft shadows of the evening lay. 
For the prevision is allied 
Unto the thing so signified; 
Or say, the foresight that awaits 
Is the same Genius that creates. 



FATE. 

It clianced during one winter, a few years ago, 
tliat our cities were bent on discussing the theory 
of the Age. By an odd coincidence, four or five 
noted men were each reading a discourse to the 
citizens of Boston or New York, on the Spirit of 
the Times. It so happened that the subject had 
the same jH'ominence in some remarkable pam- 
phlets and journals issued in London in the same 
season. To me, however, the question of the times 
resolved itself into a practical question of the con- 
duct of life. How shall I live ? We are incom- 
petent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot 
span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, be- 
hold their return, and reconcile their opposition. 
We can only obey our own polarity. 'Tis fine 
for us to speculate and elect our course, if we 
must accept an irresistible dictation. 

In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come 
upon immovable limitations. We are fired -vs^Ith 
the hope to reform men. After many experi- 
ments, we find that we must begin earlier, — at 
school. But the boys and girls are not docile ; 



2 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

we can make nothing of them. We decide tliat 

o 

they are not of good stock. We must begin our 
reform earlier still, — at generation : that is to say, 
there is Fate, or laws of the world. 

But if there be irresistible dictation, this dicta- 
tion understands itself. If we must accept Fato, 
wo are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the 
significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, 
the power of character. This is true, and that 
other is true. But our geometry cannot span these 
extreme points, and reconcile them. What to do ? 
By obeying each thought frankly, by harping, or, 
if you will, pounding on each string, we learn at 
last its power. By the same obedience to other 
thoughts, we learn theirs, and then comes some 
reasonable hope of harmonizing them. We are 
sure, that, though we know not how, necessity 
does comport with liberty, the individual with the 
world, my polarity with the spirit of the times. 
The riddle of the age has for each a private solu- 
tion. If one would study his own time, it must 
be by this method of taking up in turn each of the 
leading topics which belong to our scheme of hu- 
man life, and, by firmly stating all that is agree- 
able to experience on one, and doing the same 
justice to the opposing facts in the others, the true 
limitations will appear. Any excess of emphasis, 
on one part, would be corrected, and a just balance 
would be made. 



fATE. 3 

But let us honestly state the facts. Our Amer- 
ica has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, 
great nations, have not been boasters and buf- 
foons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have 
manned themselves to face it. The Spartan, em- 
bodying his religion in his country, dies before its 
majesty without a question. The Turk, who be- 
lieves his doom is written on the iron leaf in the 
moment when he entered the world, rushes on the 
enemy's sabre with undivided will. The Turk, 
the Arab, the Persian, accepts the foreordained 
fate. 

" On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave, 
The appointed, and the unappointed day; 
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save, 
Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay." 

The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our 
Calvinists, in the last generation, had something 
of the same dignity. They felt that the weight 
of the Universe held them down to their place. 
What could they do ? Wise men feel that there 
is something which cannot be talked or voted 
away, — a strap or belt which girds the world. 

"The Destiny, minister general. 
That executeth in the world o'er all, 
The purveyance which God hath seen befome, 
So strong it is, that tho' the world had sworn 
The contrary of a thing by yea or nay, 
Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

That falleth not oft in a thousand year; 
For, certainlj', our appetites here, 
Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, 
Ail tliis is ruled by the sight above." 

Chauceu: The Knifjlite's Tale. 



The Greek Tragedy expressed tlie same sense : 
"Whatever is fated, that will take place. The 
great immense mind of Jove is not to he trans- 
gressed." 

Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or 
town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly 
narrowed to village theologies, which preach an 
election or favoritism. And, now and then, an 
amiable parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert Hun- 
tington, believes in a pistareen-Providence, which, 
whenever the good man wants a dinner, makes 
that somebody shall knock at his door, and leave 
a half-dollar. But Nature is no sentimentalist, — - 
does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that 
the world is rough and surly, and will not mind 
drowning a man or a woman ; but swallows your 
ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate 
of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, 
freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the 
elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no 
persons. The way of Providence is a little rude. 
The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the 
tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the 
crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the 



FATE. 5 

anaconda, — these are in the system, and our habits 
are Hke theirs. You have just dined, and, however 
scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the 
graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, — 
expensive races, — race living at the expense of 
race. The planet is liable to shocks from comets, 
perturbations from planets, rendings from earth- 
quake and volcano, alterations of climate, preces- 
sions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by opening of 
the forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns and 
counties fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake 
killed men like flies. At Naples, three years ago, 
ten thousand persons were crushed in a few min- 
utes. The scurvy at sea ; the sword of the climate 
in the west of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at 
New Orleans, cut off men like a massacre. Our 
western prairie shakes with fever and ague. The 
cholera, the small-pox, have proved as mortal to 
some tribes, as a frost to the crickets, which, hav- 
ing filled the summer with noise, are silenced by 
a fall of the temperature of one night. Without 
uncovering what does not concern us, or counting 
how many species of parasites hang on a bombyx ; 
or groping after intestinal parasites, or infusory 
biters, or the obscurities of alternate generation ; — 
the forms of the shark, the labrus^ the jaw of the 
sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons of 
the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea, 
— are hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature. 



6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Let US not deny it up and down. Providence has 
a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it 
is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixea 
instmmentalities, or to dress up that terrific bene- 
factor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a 
student in divinity. 

Will you say, the disasters which threaten man- 
kind are exceptional, and one need not lay his ac- 
count for cataclysms every day ? Aye, but what 
happens once, may happen again, and so long as 
these strokes are not to be parried by us, they 
must be feared. 

But these shocks and ruins are less destructive 
to us, than the stealthy power of other laws which 
act on us daily. An expense of ends to means 
is fate ; — organization tyrannizing over character. 
The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, 
is a book of fate : the bill of the bird, the skull 
of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits. So 
is the scale of races, of temperaments ; so is sex ; 
so is climate ; so is the reaction of talents imprison- 
ing the vital power in certain directions. Every 
spirit makes its house ; but afterwards the house 
confines the spirit. 

The gross lines are legible to the dull : the cab- 
man is phrenologist so far : he looks in your face to 
«ee if his shilling is sure. A dome of brow denotes 
one thing ; a pot-belly another ; a squint, a pug- 
nose, mats of hair, the pigment of the epidermis, 



FATE. 7 

betray character. People seem sheathed in their 
tough organization. Ask Spurzheim, ask the doc- 
tors, ask Quetelet, if temperaments decide nothing ? 
or if there be anything they do not decide ? Read 
the description in medical books of the four tem- 
peraments, and you will think you are reading your 
own thoughts which you had not yet told. Find 
the part which black eyes, and which blue eyes, 
play severally in the company. How shall a man 
escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his 
veins the black drop which he drew from his fath- 
er's or his mother's life ? It often appears in a 
family, as if all the qualities of the progenitors were 
potted in several jars, — some ruling quality in each 
son or daughter of the house, — and sometimes the 
unmixed temperament, the rank unmitigated elixir, 
the family vice, is drawn off in a separate indi- 
vidual, and the others are proportionally relieved. 
We sometimes see a change of expression in our 
companion, and say, his father, or his mother, comes 
to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote 
relative. In different hours, a man represents each 
of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven 
or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven 
or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute 
the variety of notes for that new piece of music 
which his life is. At the corner of the street, you 
read the possibility of each passenger, in the facial 
Angle, in the complexion, in the depth of his eye. 



8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

His parentage determines it. Men are what their 
mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom 
which Aveaves huckaback, why it does not make 
cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a 
chemical discovery from that jobber. Ask the dig- 
ger in tlie ditch to explain Newton's laws : the fhie 
organs of his brain have been pinched by overwork 
and squalid poverty from father to son, for a hun- 
dred years. When each comes forth from his 
mother's womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him. 
Let him value his hands and feet, he has but one 
pair. So he has but one future, and that is already 
predetermined in his lobes, and described in that 
little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat form. All the 
privilege and all tlie legislation of the world can- 
not meddle or help to make a poet or a prince of 
him. 

Jesus said, " When he looketh on her, he hath 
committed adultery." But he is an adulterer be- 
fore he has yet looked on the woman, by the super- 
fluity of animal, and the defect of thought, in his 
constitution. Who meets him, or who meets her, 
in the street, sees that they are ripe to be each 
other's victim. 

In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital 
force, and the stronger these are, the individual is 
so much weaker. The more of these drones perish, 
the better for the hive. If, later, they give birth 
to some superior individual, with force enough to 



FATE. 9 

add to this animal a new aim, and a complete ap- 
paratus to work it out, all the ancestors are gladly 
forgotten. Most men and most women are merely 
one couple more. Now and then, one has a new 
cell or camarilla opened in his brain, — an archi- 
tectural, a musical, or a philological knack, somo 
stray taste or talent for flowers, or chemistry, or 
pigments, or story-telling, a good hand for drawing, 
a good foot for dancing, an athletic frame for wide 
journeying, &c. — which skill nowise alters rank in 
the scale of nature, but serves to pass the time, the 
life of sensation going on as before. At last, these 
hints and tendencies are fixed in one, or in a suc- 
cession. Each absorbs so much food and force, as 
to become itself a new centre. The new talent 
draws off so rapidly the vital force, that not enough 
remains for the animal functions, hardly enough for 
health ; so that, in the second generation, if the like 
genius appear, the health is visibly deteriorated, and 
the generative force impau'ed. 

People are born wdth the moral or with the ma- 
terial bias ; — uterine brothers with this diverginf^ 
destination : and I suppose, with high magnifiers, 
Mr. Frauenhofer or Dr. Carpenter might come to 
distinguish in the embryo at the fourth day, this 
is a Whig, and that a Free-soiler. 

It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain 

vf Fate, to reconcile this despotism of race with 

liberty, which led the Hindoos to say, " Fate is 
1* 



10 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state 
of existence." I find the coincidence of the ex- 
tremes of eastern and western speculation in the 
daring statement of Schelling, "there is in every 
man a certain feehng, that he has been what he is 
from all eternity, and by no means became such in 
time." To say it less sublimely, — in the history 
of the individual is always an account of his con- 
dition, and he knows himself to be a party to his 
present estate. 

A good deal of our politics is physiological. Now 
and then, a man of wealth in the heyday of youth 
adopts the tenet of broadest freedom. In England, 
there is always some man of wealth and large con- 
nection planting himself, during all his years of 
health, on the side of progress, who, as soon as he 
begins to die, checks his forward play, calls in his 
troops, and becomes conservative. All conserva- 
tives are such from personal defects. They have 
been effeminated by position or nature, born halt 
and blind, through luxury of their parents, and 
can only, like invahds, act on the defensive. But 
strong natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire 
giants. Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, 
Kossuths, are inevitable patriots, until their life 
ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and money, 
warp them. 

The strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities 
and nations, in the healthiest and strongest. Prob- 



FATE. 11 

ably, the election goes by avoirdupois weight, and, 
if you could weigh bodily the tonnage of any hun- 
dred of the Whig and the Democratic party in a 
town, on the Dearborn balance, as they passed the 
hayscales, you could predict with certainty which 
party would carry it. On the whole, it would be 
rather the speediest way of deciding the vote, to 
put the selectmen or the mayor and aldermen at 
the hayscales. 

In science, we have to consider two things : power 
and circumstance. All we know of the egg, from 
each successive discovery, is, another vesicle; and if, 
after five hundred years, you get a better observer, 
or a better glass, he finds within the last observed 
another. In vegetable and animal tissue, it is just 
alike, and all that the primary power or spasm 
operates, is, still, vesicles, vesicles. Yes, — but the 
tyrannical Circumstance ! A vesicle in new cir- 
cumstances, a vesicle lodged in darkness, Oken 
thought, became animal ; in light, a plant. Lodged 
in the parent animal, it suffers changes, which end 
in unsheathing miraculous capability in the unal- 
tered vesicle, and it unlocks itself to fish, bird, or 
q^uadruped, head and foot, eye and claw. The 
Circumstance is Nature. Nature is, what you may 
do. There is much you may not. We have two 
things, — the circumstance, and the life. Once 
we thought, positive power was all. Now we 
learn, that negative power, or circumstance, is half. 



12 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Nature is the tyrannous circumstance, the thick 
skull, the sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock-like 
jaw ; necessitated activity ; violent direction ; the 
conditions of a tool, like the locomotive, strong 
enough on its track, but which can do nothing but 
mischief off of it ; or skates, which are wings on 
the ice, but fetters on the ground. 

The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She 
turns the gigantic pages, — leaf after leaf, — never 
re-turning one. One leaf she lays down, a floor of 
granite ; then a thousand ages, and a bed of slate ; 
a thousand ages, and a measure of coal ; a thou- 
sand ages, and a layer of marl and mud : vegetable 
forms appear ; her first misshapen animals, zoo- 
phyte, trilobium, fish; then, saurians,- -rude forms, 
in which she has only blocked her future statue, 
concealing under these unwieldly monsters the fine 
type of her coming king. The face <jt' the planet 
cools and dries, the races meliorate, and man is 
born. But when a race has lived its term, it 
comes no more a2:ain. 

The population of the world is a conditional pop- 
ulation ; not the best, but the best that could live 
now ; and the scale of tribes, and the steadixiess 
with which victory adheres to one tribe, and defeat 
to another, is as uniform as the superposition of 
strata. We know in history what weight belongs to 
race. We see the English, French, and Germans 
planting themselves on every shore and market of 



FATE. 13 

America and Australia, and monopolizing the com- 
merce of these countries. We like the nervous and 
victorious habit of our own branch of the family. 
We follow the step of the Jew, of the Indian, of the 
Xegro. We see how much will has been expended 
to extinguish the Jew, in vain. Look at the un- 
palatable conclusions of Knox, in his " Fragment 
of Kaces," — a rash and unsatisfactory writer, but 
charged with pungent and unforgetable truths. 
" Nature respects race, and not hybrids." " Every 
race has its own habitat.''' " Detach a colony from 
the race, and it deteriorates to the crab." See the 
shades of the picture. The German and Irish mil- 
lions, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano in 
their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, 
and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, 
to make corn cheap, and then to lie down prema- 
turely to make a spot of green grass on the prairie. 
One more fagot of these" adamantine bandages, 
is, the new science of Statistics. It is a rule, that 
the most casual and extraordinary events — if the 
basis of population is broad enough — become mat- 
ter of fixed calculation. It would not be safe to 
say when a captain like Bonaparte, a singer like 
Jenny Lind, or a navigator like Bowditch, would 
be born in Boston : but, on a population of twenty 
or two hundred millions, something like accuracy 
may be had.* 

* " Everything which pertains to the human species, considered 



14 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

'Tis frivolous to fix pedantically the date of par- 
ticular inventions. They have all been invented 
over and over fifty times. Man is the arch ma- 
chine, of which all these shifts drawn from himself 
are toy models. He helps himself on each emer- 
gency by copying or duplicating his own structure, 
just so far as the need is. 'Tis hard to find the 
right Homer, Zoroaster, or Menu ; harder still to 
find the Tubal Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or 
Copernicus, or Fust, or Fulton, the indisputable 
inventor. There are scores and centuries of them. 
" The air is full of men." This kind of talent so 
abounds, this constructive tool-making efficiency, as 
if it adhered to the chemic atoms, as if the air 
he breathes were made of Vaucansons, Franklins, 
and Watts. 

Doubtless, in every million there will be an as- 
tronomer, a mathematician, a comic poet, a mystic. 
No one can read the history of astronomy, with- 
out perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, 
are not new men, or a new kind of men, but 
that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empedocles, 
Aristarchus, Pythagoras, (Enopides, had antici- 
pated them ; each had the same tense geometrical 
brain, apt for the same vigorous computation and 

as a whole, belongs to the order of physical facts The greater the 
number of individuals, the more dues the influence cf the individual 
will disappear, leaving predominance to a series of general facts de- 
pendent on causes by which society exists, and is preserved." — 

QCETELET. 



FATE. 15 

logic, a mind parallel to the movement of the 
world. The Roman mile probably rested on a 
measure of a decree of the meridian. Mahometan 
and Chinese know what we know of leap-year, 
of the Gregorian calendar, and of the precession 
of the equinoxes. As, in every barrel of cowries, 
brought to New Bedford, there shall be one orangia, 
BO there will, in a dozen millions of Malays and 
Mahometans, be one or two astronomical skulls. 
In a large city, the most casual things, and things 
whose beauty lies in their casualty, are produced as 
punctually and to order as the baker's muffin for 
breakfast. Punch makes exactly one capital joke 
a week ; and the journals contrive to furnish one 
good piece of news every day. 

And not less work the laws of repression, the 
penalties of violated functions. Famine, typhus, 
frost, war, suicide, and effete races, must be reck- 
oned calculable parts of the system of the world. 

These are pebbles from the mountain, hints 
of the terms by which our life is walled up, and 
which show a kind of mechanical exactness, as of 
a loom or mill, in what we call casual or fortuitous 
events. 

The force with which we resist these torrents of 
tendency looks so ridiculously inadequate, that it 
amounts to little more than a criticism or a protest 
made b}* a minority of one, under compulsion of 
millions. I seemed, in the height of a tempest, to 



16 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

see men overboard struggling in the waves, and 
driven about here and there. They glanced intel- 
ligently at each other, but 'twas little they could do 
for one another ; 'twas much if each could keep 
afloat alone. Well, they had a right to their eye- 
beams, and all the rest was Fate. 

We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping- 
out in our planted gardens of the core of the world. 
No picture of life can have any veracity that does 
not admit the odious facts. A man's power is 
hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experi- 
ments, he touches on every side, until he learns its 
arc. 

The element runnins; throuo;h entire nature, 
which we popularly call Fate, is known to us as 
limitation. Whatever limits us, we call Fate. If 
we are brute and barbarous, the fate takes a brute 
and dreadful shape. As we refine, our checks 
become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the 
antagonism takes a spiritual form. In the Hindoo 
fables, Vishnu follows Maya through all her ascend- 
ing changes, from insect and crawfish up to ele- 
phant ; whatever form she took, he took the male 
form of that kind, until she became at last woman 
and goddess, and he a man and a god. The lim- 
itations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of 
necessity is always perched at the top. 

When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable 



FATE. 17 

to bind the Fenris Wolf with steel or with weight 
of mountains, — the one he snapped and the other 
he spurned with his heel, — thej put round his foot 
a limp band softer than silk or cobweb, and this 
held him : the more he spurned it, the stifftr it 
drew. So soft and so stanch is the ring of Fate. 
Neither brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, 
nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius, 
can get rid of this limp band. For if we give it 
the high sense in which the poets use it, even 
thought itself is not above Fate : that too must act 
according to eternal laws, and all that is wilful and 
fantastic in it is in opposition to its fundamental 
essence. 

And, last of all, high over thought, in the world 
of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the 
high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and 
always striking soon or late, when justice is not 
done. What is useful will last ; what is hurtful 
will sink. " The doer must suffer," said the 
Greeks : " you would soothe a Deity not to be 
soothed." " God himself cannot procure good for 
the wicked," said the Welsh triad. " God may 
consent, but only for a time," said the bard of 
Spain. The limitation is impassable by any insight 
of man. In its last and loftiest ascensions, insio;ht 
itself, and the freedom of the will, is one of its 
obedient members. But we must not run into 
generalizations too large, but show the natural 



18 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

bounds or essential distinctions, and seek to do 
justice to the other elements as well. 

Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and mor- 
als, — in race, in retardations of strata, and in 
thought and character as well. It is everywhere 
bound or limitation. But Fate has its lord ; limita- 
tion its limits ; is different seen from abov^e and 
from below ; from within and from without. For, 
though Fate is immense, so is power, which is the 
other fact in the dual world, immense. If Fate 
follows and limits power, power attends and an- 
tagonizes Fate. We must respect Fate as natural 
history, but there is more than natural history. 
For who and what is this criticism that pries into 
the matter ? Man is not order of nature, sack 
and sack, belly and members, link in a chain, nor 
any ignominious baggage, but a stupendous an- 
tagonism, a dragging together of the poles of the 
Universe. He betrays his relation to what is below 
him, — thick-skulled, small-brained, fishy, quadru- 
manous, — quadruped ill-disguised, hardly escaped 
into biped, and has paid for the new powers by loss 
of some of the old ones. But the liojhtnino^ which 
explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and 
suns, is in him. On one side, elemental order, 
sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, 
sea and sliore ; and, on the other part, thought, the 
spirit which composes and decomposes nature, — 



FATE. 19 

here tKey are, side by side, god and devil, mind and 
matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding 
peacefully together in the eye and brain of every 
man. 

Nor can he blink the freewill. To hazard the 
contradiction, — freedom is necessary. If you please 
to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say. Fate 
is all ; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of 
man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing 
and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. So 
far as a man thinks, he is free. And though noth- 
ing is more disgusting; than the crowing about lib- 
erty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant 
mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like 
a " Declaration of Independence," or the statute 
right to vote, by those who have never dared to 
think or to act, yet it is wholesome to m^an to look 
not at Fate, but the other way : the practical view 
is the other. His sound relation to these facts is to 
use and command, not to cringe to them. " Look 
not on nature, for her name is fatal," said the 
oracle. The too much contemplation of these limits 
induces meanness. They who talk much of des- 
tiny, their birth-star, &c., are in a lower dangerous 
plane, and invite the evils they fear. 

I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud 
believers in Destiny. They conspire with it ; a 
loving resignation is with the event. But the 
dogma makes a different impression, when it is 



20 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

held by the weak and lazy. 'Tis weak and vicious 
people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use 
of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness 
of nature. Rude and invincible except by them- 
selves are the elements. So let man be. Let him 
empty his breast of his windy conceits, and show 
his lordship by manners and deeds on the scale of 
nature. Let him hold his pui-pose as with the tug 
of gravitation. No power, no persuasion, no bribe 
shall make him give up his point. A man ought to 
compare advantageously with a river, an oak, or a 
mountain. He shall have not less the flow, the 
expansion, and the resistance of these. 

'Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal cour- 
age. Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your 
friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what 
danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are 
guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If you be- 
lieve in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for 
your good. 

For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part 
of it, and can confront fate with fate. If the 
Universe have these savage accidents, our atoms 
are as savao-e in resistance. We should ^e crushed 

o 

by the atmosphere, but for the reaction of the air 
within the body. A tube made of a film of glass 
can resist the shock of the ocean, if filled with the 
same water. If there be omnipotence in the stroke, 
there is omnipotence of recoil. 



FATE. 21 

1. But Fate against Fate is only parrying and 
defence : there are, also, the noble creative forces. 
The revelation of Thought takes man out of servi- 
tude into freedom. We rightly say of ourselves, 
we Averc born, and afterward we were born again, 
and many times. We have successive experiences 
so important, that the new forgets the old, and 
hence the mythology of the seven or the nine 
heavens. The day of days, the great day of the 
feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens 
to the Unity in things, to the omnipresence of law ; 
— - sees that what is must be, and ought to be, or is 
the best. This beatitude dips from on high down 
on us, and we see. It is not in us so much as we 
are in it. If the air come to our lungs, we breathe 
and live ; if not, we die. If the light come to our 
eyes, we see ; else not. And if truth come to our 
mind, we suddenly expand to its dimensions, as if 
we grew to worlds. We are as lawgivers ; we 
speak for Nature ; we prophesy and divine. 

This insight throws us on the party and interest 
of the Universe, against all and sundry ; against 
ourselves, as much as others. A man speaking 
from insignt affirms of himself what is true of the 
mind : seeing its immortality, he says, I am im- 
mortal ; seeing its invincibility, he says, I am 
strong. It is not in us, but Ave are in it. It is 
of the maker, not of what is made. All things are 
touched and changed by it. This uses, and is not 



22 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

used. It distances those who share it, from those 
who share it not. Those who share it not are 
flocks and herds. It dates from itself ; — not from 
former men or better men, — gospel, or constitution, 
or college, or custom. Where it shines. Nature is 
no longer intrusive, but all things make a musical 
or pictorial impression. The world of men show 
like a comedy without laughter : — populations, in- 
terests, government, history ; — 'tis all toy figures 
in a toy house. It does not overvalue particular 
truths. We hear eagerly every thought and word 
quoted from an intellectual man. But, in his pres- 
ence, our own mind is roused to activity, and we 
forget very fast what he says, much more interested 
in the new play of our own thought, than in any 
thought of his. 'Tis the majesty into which we 
have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the 
scorn of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage 
VIS. Once we were stepping a little this way, and 
a little that way ; now, we are as men in a balloon, 
and do not think so much of the point we have left, 
or the point we would make, as of the liberty and 
glory of the way. 

Just as much intellect as you add, so much 
organic power. He who sees through the design, 
presides over it, and must will that which must be. 
We sit and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream 
will come to pass. Our thought, though it were 
only an hour old, affirms an oldest necessity, not to 



FATE. 23 

be separated from tlionglit, and not to be separated 
from will. They must always have coexisted. It 
apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead, which 
refuse to be severed from it. It is not mine or 
thine, but the will of all mind. It is poured into 
the souls of all men, as the soul itself which consti- 
tutes them men. I know not whether there be, as 
is alleged, in the upper region of our atmosphere, a 
permanent westerly current, which carries with it 
all atoms which rise to that height, but I see, that 
when souls reach a certain clearness of perception, 
they accept a knowledge and motive above selfish- 
ness. A breath of will blows eternally through the 
universe of souls in the direction of the Right and 
Necessary. It is the air which all intellects inhale 
and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the 
worlds into order and orbit. 

Thought dissolves the material universe, by car- 
rying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. 
Of two men, each obeying his own thought, he 
whose thought is deepest will be the strongest 
character. Always one man more than another 
represents the will of Divine Providence to the 
period. 

2. If thought makes free, so does the moral sen- 
timent. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse 
to be analyzed. Yet we can see that with the per- 
ception of truth is joined the desire that it shall 
prevail. That affection is essential to will. More- 



24 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

over, when a strong will appears, it usually results 
from a certain unity of organization, as if tlie whole 
energy of body and mind flowed in one direction. 
All o'reat force is real and elemental. There is no 
manufacturino; a strono; will. There must be a 
pound to balance a pound. Where power is shown 
m will, it must rest on the universal force. Alaric 
and Bonaparte must believe they rest on a truth, or 
their will can be bouojht or bent. There is a bribe 
possible for any finite will. But the pure sympathy 
with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot 
be bribed or bent. Whoever has had experience 
of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in 
unlimited power. Each pulse from that heart is an 
oath from the Most Hio-h. I know not what the 
word sublime means, if it be not the intimations in 
this infant of a terrific force. A text of heroism, a 
name and anecdote of courage, are not arguments, 
but sallies of freedom. One of these is the verse 
of the Persian Hafiz, " 'Tis written on the gate of 
Heaven, ' Wo unto him who suffers himself to be 
betrayed by Fate ! ' " Does the reading of history 
make us fatalists ? What courao;e does not the 
opposite opinion show ! A little whim of will to be 
free gallantly contending against the universe of 
chemistry. 

But insight is not will, nor is affection will. 
Perception is cold, and goodness dies in wishes ; 
as Voltaire said, 'tis the misfortune of worthy people 



FATE. 25 

that tliey are cowards ; "2m des 2ylus grands onaU 
heurs des Jionnetes gens c'est quils sont des laches.'^'* 
There must be a fusion of tliese two to generate 
the energy of will. There can be no driving force, 
except through the conversion of the man into his 
will, making him the will, and the will him. And 
one may say boldly, that no man has a right per- 
ception of any truth, who has not been reacted on 
by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr. 

The one serious and formidable thinfi: in nature 
iS a will. Society is servile from want of will, and 
therefore the world wants sa^aours and relimons. 

o 

One way is right to go : the hero sees it, and 
moves on that aim, and has the Avorld under him 
for root and support. He is to others as the world. 
His approbation is honor ; his dissent, infamy. The 
glance of his eye has the force of sunbeams. A 
personal influence towers up in memory only wor- 
thy, and we gladly forget numbers, money, climate, 
gravitation, and the rest of Fate. 

We can afford to allow the limitation, if we 
know it is the meter of the m'owino; man. We 
stand against Fate, as children stand up against the 
wall in their father's house, and notch their height 
fi-om year to year. But when the boy grows to man, 
and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall, 
and builds a new and bigger. 'Tis only a question 
of time. Every brave youth is in training to ride 



26 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and rule tliis dragon. His science is to make weap- 
ons and wings of these passions and retarding forces. 
Now whether, seeing these tw^o things, fate and pow- 
er, we are permitted to beheve in unity ? The bulk 
of mankind believe in tw^o gods. They are under 
one dominion here in the house, as friend and par- 
ent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in 
religion : but in mechanics, in dealing with steam 
and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they 
come under another ; and that it would be a prac- 
tical blunder to transfer the method and way of 
working of one sphere, into the other. What good, 
honest, generous men at home, will be wolves and 
foxes on change ! What pious men in the parloi 
w^ill vote for what reprobates at the polls ! To a 
certain point, they believe themselves the care of a 
Providence. But, in a steamboat, in an epidemic, 
in war, they believe a malignant energy rules. 

But relation and connection are not somewhere 
and sometimes, but everywdiere and always. The 
divine order does not stop where their sight stops. 
The friendly power works on the same rules, in the 
next farm, and the next planet. But, where they 
have not experience, they run against it, and hurt 
themuelves. Fate, then, is a name for facts not 
yet passed under the fire of thought ; — for causes 
which are unpenetrated. 

But every jet of chaos which threatens to exter- 
minate us, is convertible by intellect into wholesome 



FATE. 27 

torce. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water 
drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But 
learn to swim, trim your bark, and the wave which 
drowned it, will be cloven by it, and cany it, like 
its own foam, a plume and a power. The cold is 
inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, free;ies 
a man like a dew-drop. But learn to skate, and 
the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic 
motion. The cold will brace your limbs and brain 
to genius, and make you foremost men of time. 
Cold and sea will train an imperial Saxon race, 
which nature cannot bear to lose, and, after cooping 
it up for a thousand years in yonder England, gives 
a hundi-ed Englands, a hundred Mexicos. All 
the bloods it shall absorb and domineer: and more 
than Mexicos, — the secrets of water and steam, the 
spasms of electricity, the ductility of metals, the char- 
iot of the air, the ruddered balloon are awaiting you. 
The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds 
that of war ; but right drainage destroys typhus. 
The plague in the sea-service from scurvy is healed 
by lemon juice and other diets portable or pro- 
curable : the depopulation by cholera and small-pox 
is ended by drainage and vaccination ; and every 
other pest is not less in the chain of cause and 
effect, and may be fought off. And, whilst art 
draws out the venom, it commonly extorts some 
benefit from the vanquished enemy. The mis- 
chievous torrent is taught to drudge for man : tbo 



28 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

wild Leasts he makes useful for food, or dress^ or 
labor ; the chemic explosions are controlled like his 
%Yatcli. These are now the steeds on which he 
rides. Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, 
by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by 
electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt 
the eagle in his own element. There's nothing he 
will not make his carrier. 

Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we 
dreaded. Every pot made by any human potter or 
brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy, 
lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house 
away. But the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and 
Fulton bethought themselves, that, where was pow- 
er, was not devil, but was God ; that it must be 
availed of, and not by any means let off and wasted. 
Could he lift pots and roofs and houses so handily ? 
he was the workman they were in search of. He 
could be used to lift away, chain, and compel other 
devils, far more reluctant and dangerous, namely, 
cubic miles of earth, mountains, weight or resist- 
ance of water, machinery, and the labors of all 
men in the world ; and time he shall lengthen, and 
shorten space. 

It has not fared much otherwise with higher 
Kinds cf steam. The opinion of the million was 
the terror of the world, and it was attempted, 
either to dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to 
pile it over with strata of society, — a layer of 



FATE. 25 

soldiers ; over that, a layer of lords ; and a king 
on the top ; with clamps and hoops of castles, gar- 
risons, and police. But, sometimes, the religious 
principle would get in, and burst the hoops, and 
rive every mountain laid on top of it. The Fultons 
and Watts of politics, believing in unity, saw that 
it was a power, and, by satisfying it, (as justice 
satisfies everybody,) through a different disposition 
of society, — grouping it on a level, instead of piling 
it into a mountain, — they have contrived to make 
of this terror tlie most harmless and energetic form 
of a State. 

Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. 
Who likes to have a dapper phrenologist pronounc- 
ing on his fortunes ? Who likes to believe that 
he has hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the 
vices of a Saxon or Celtic race, which will be sure 
to pull him down, — with what grandeur of hope 
and resolve he is fired, — into a selfish, huckstering, 
servile, dodging animal ? A learned physician tells 
us, the fact is invariable with the Neapolitan, that, 
when mature, he assumes the forms of the unmis- 
takable scoundrel. That is a little overstated, — 
but may pass. 

But these are magazines and arsenals. A man 
must thank his defects, and stand in some terror 
of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so 
largely on his forces, as to lame him ; a defect pays 
him revenues on the other side. The sufferance, 



30 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

wLich is the badge of the Jew, has made him, in 
these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth. 
If Fate is ore and quarry, if evil is good in the 
making, if limitation is power that shall be, if ca- 
lamities, oppositions, and weights are wings and 
means, — we are reconciled. 

Fate involves the melioration. No statement of 
the Universe can have any soundness, which does 
not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the 
whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in 
proportion to the health. Behind every individual, 
closes organization : before him, opens liberty, — 
the Better, the Best. The first and worst races are 
dead. The second and imperfect races are dying 
out, or remain for the maturing of higher. In the 
latest race, in man, every generosity, every new 
perception, the love and praise he extorts from his 
fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into 
freedom. Liberation of the will from the sheaths 
and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, 
is the end and aim of this world. Every calamity 
is a spur and valuable hint ; and where his en- 
deavors do not yet fiilly avail, they tell as tendency. 
The whole circle of animal life, — tooth against 
iooth, — devouring war, war for food, a yelp of pain 
and a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the whole 
menagerie, the whole chemical mass is mellowed 
and refined for higher use, — pleases at a sufficient 
perspective. 



FATE 81 

But to see how fate slides into freedom, and fi'ee- 
dom into fate, observe how far the roots of every 
creature run, or find, if you can, a point where 
there is no thread of connection. Our hfe is ccn- 
sentaneous and far-related. This knot of nature is 
so well tied, that nobody was ever cunning enough 
to find the two ends. Nature is intricate, over- 
lapped, interweaved, and endless. Christopher 
Wren said of the beautiful King's College chapel, 
" that, if anybody would tell him where to lay the 
first stone, he w^ould build such another." But 
■where shall we find the first atom in this house of 
man, which is all consent, inosculation, and balance 
of parts ? 

The web of relation is shown in habitat^ shown in 
hybernation. When hybernation was observed, it 
was found, that, whilst some animals became torpid 
in winter, others were torpid in summer : hyberna- 
tion then was a false name. The long sleejj is not 
an effect of cold, but is regulated by the supply of 
food proper to the animal. It becomes torpid when 
the fruit or prey it lives on is not in season, and 
regains its activity when its food is ready. 

Eves are found in lio;ht ; ears in auricular air ; 
feet on land ; fins in water ; Avings in air ; and, 
each creature where it was meant to be, with a 
mutual fitness. Every zone has its own Fauna. 
There is adjustment between the animal and its 
food, its parasite, its enemy. Balances are kept. 



82 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

It is not allowed to diminish in numbers, nor to ex- 
ceed. The like adjustments exist for man. His 
food is cooked, when he arrives ; his coal in the pit ; 
the house ventilated ; the mud of the deluge dried ; 
his companions arrived at the same hour, and await- 
ing him with love, concert, laughter, and tears. 
These are coarse adjustments, but the invisible are 
not less. There are more belongings to every crea- 
ture than his air and his food. His instincts must 
be met, and he has joi'edisposing power that bends 
and fits what is near him to his use. He is not 
possible until the invisible things are right for him, 
as well as the visible. Of what changes, then, 
in sky and earth, and in finer skies and earths, 
does the appearance of some Dante or Columbus 
apprise us ! 

How is this effected ? Nature is no spendthrift, 
but takes the shortest way to her ends. As the 
general says to his soldiers, " if you want a fort, 
build a fort," so nature makes every creature do its 
own work and get its living, — is it planet, animal, 
or tree. The planet makes itself. The animal cell 
makes itself ; — then, what it wants. Every crea- 
ture, — wren or dragon, — shall make its own lair. 
As soon as there is life, there is self-direction, and 
absorbing and using of material. Life is freedom, — 
life in the direct ratio of its amount. You may be 
sure, the new-born man is not inert. Life work? 
both voluntarily and supernaturally in its neighbor 



FATE. 33 

hood. Do you suppose, he can be estimated by his 
weight in pounds, or, that he is contained in his 
skin, — this reaching, radiating, jaculating fellow ? 
The smallest candle fills a mile with its rays, ani 
the papillae of a man run out to every star. 

When there is something to be done, the world 
knows how to get it done. The vegetable eye 
makes leaf, pericarp, root, bark, or thorn, as the 
need is ; the first cell converts itself into stomach, 
mouth, nose, or nail, according to the want : the 
world throws its life into a hero or a shepherd ; and 
puts him where he is wanted. Dante and Colum- 
bus were Italians, in their time : they would be 
Russians or Americans to-day. Things ripen, new 
men come. The adaptation is not capricious. The 
ulterior aim, the purpose beyond itself, the correla- 
tion by which planets subside and crystallize, then 
animate beasts and men, will not stop, but will work 
into finer particulars, and from finer to finest. 

The secret of the world is, the tie between perso 
and event. Person makes event, and event person. 
The "times," " the age," what is that, but a few pro- 
found persons and a few active persons who epitomize 
the times ? — Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, 
Calhoun, Guizot, Peel, Cobden, Kossuth, Roths- 
child, Astor, Brunei, and the rest. The same fit- 
ness must be presumed between a man and the time 
and event, as between the sexes, or between a race 
af animals and the food it eats, or the inferior races 



84 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

it uses. He thinks his fate alien, because the copub 
is hidden. But the soul contains the event that 
shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization 
of its thoughts ; and what we pray to ourselves for 
is always granted. The event is the print of your 
form. It fits you like your skin. What each does 
is proper to him. Events are the children of his 
body and mind. We learn that the soul of Fate is 
the soul of us, as Hafiz sings, 

Alas! till now I had not known, 

My guide and fortune's guide are one. 

All the toys that infatuate men, and which they 
play for, — houses, land, money, luxury, power, 
fame, are the selfsame thing, with a new gauze or 
two of illusion overlaid. And of all the drums and 
rattles by which men are made willing to have their 
heads broke, and are led out solemnly every morn- 
ing to parade, — the most admirable is this by which 
we are brought to believe that events are arbitrary, 
and independent of actions. At the conjuror's, we 
detect the hair by which he moves his puppet, but 
we have not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread 
that ties cause and effect. 

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, 
by making these the fruit of his character. Ducks 
take to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to the 
sea margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting- 
rooms, soldiers to the frontier. Thus events grow 
on the same stem with persons ; are sub-persons. 



FATE. 35 

The pleasure of life is according to the man that 
lives it, and not according to the work or the place. 
Life is an ecstasy. We know what madness be- 
longs to love, — what power to paint a vile object 
in hues of heaven. As insane persons are indiffer- 
ent to their dress, diet, and other accommodations, 
and, as we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most 
absurd acts, so, a drop more of wme in our cup of 
life will reconcile us to strange company and work. 
Each creature puts forth from itself its own con- 
dition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy 
house on the pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on 
the apple perspire their own bed, and the fish its 
shell. In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, 
and go as brave as the zodiac. In age, we put out 
another sort of perspiration, — gout, fever, rheuma- 
tism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and avarice. 

A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. 
A man's friends are his magnetisms. We go to 
Herodotus and Plutarch for examples of Fate ; 
but we are examples. " Quisque suos patimur 
manes y The tendency of every man to enact 
all that is in his constitution is expressed in the 
old belief, that the efforts which we make to es- 
cape from our destiny only serve to lead us into 
it : and I have noticed, a man likes better to be 
complimented on his position, as the proof of the 
last or total excellence, than on his merits. 

A man will see his character emitted in the 



86 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

events that seem to meet, but which exude from 
and accompany hnn. Events expand with the 
character. As once he found himself among toys, 
so now he plays a part in colossal systems, and his 
growth is declared in his ambition, his companions, 
mid his performance. He looks like a piece of luck, 
but is a piece of causation ; — the mosaic, angulated 
and ground to fit into the gap he fills. Hence in 
each town there is some man who is, in his brain 
and perforaiance, an explanation of the tillage, pro- 
duction, factories, banks, churches, ways of living, 
and society, of that town. If you do not chance to 
meet him, all that you see will leave you a little 
puzzled : if you see him, it will become plain. We 
know in Massachusetts who built New Bedford, 
who built Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Clinton, Fitch- 
burg, Holyoke, Portland, and many another noisy 
mart. Each of these men, if they were trans- 
parent, would seem to you not so much men, as 
walking cities, and, wherever you put them, they 
would build one. 

History is the action and reaction of these two, 
— Nature and Thought ; — two boys pushing each 
other on the curb-stone of the pavement. Eveiy- 
thing is pusher or pushed : and matter and mind 
are in perpetual tilt and balance, so. Whilst the 
man is weak, the earth takes up him. He plants 
his brain and affections. By and by he will take 
up the earth, and have his gai'dens and vmeyards 



FATE. 37 

m the beautiful order and productiveness of his 
thought. Every sohd in the universe is ready to 
become fluid on the approach of the mind, and the 
power to flux it is the measure of the mind. If 
the wall remain adamant, it accuses the want of 
thouoht. To a subtler force, it will stream into 
new forms, expressive of the character of the mind. 
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggre- 
gate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed 
the will of some man ? The granite was reluctant, 
but his hands were stronger, and it came. Iron was 
deep in the ground, and well combined with stone ; 
but coukl not hide from his fires. Wood, lime, 
stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth 
and sea, in vain. Here they are, within reach of 
every man's day-labor, — what he wants of them. 
The whole world is the flux of matter over the 
wires of thought to the poles or points where it 
would build. The races of men rise out of the 
ground preoccupied with a thought which rules 
them, and divided into parties ready armed and 
angry to fight for this metaphysical abstraction. 
The quality of the thought differences the Egyp- 
tian and the Roman, the Austrian and the Amer- 
ican. The men who come on the stage at one 
period are all found to be related to each other. 
Certain ideas are in the air. We are all im- 
pressionable, for we are made of them ; all impres- 
sionable, but some more than others, and these first 



38 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

express them. This explams the curious contem- 
poraneousness of inventions and discoveries. The 
truth is in the air, and the most impressionable 
brain will announce it first, but all will announce 
it a few minutes later. So women, as most sus- 
ceptible, are the best index of the coming hour. 
So the great man, that is, the man most imbued 
witli the spirit of the time, is the impressionable 
man, — of a fibre irritable and delicate, like iodine 
to light. He feels the infinitesimal attractions. 
His mind is righter than others, because he yields 
to a current so feeble as can be felt only by a needle 
delicately poised. 

The correlation is shown in defects. MoUer, in 
his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building 
which was fitted accurately to answer its end, would 
turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not 
been intended. I find the like unity in human 
structures rather virulent and pervasive ; that a 
crudity in the blood will appear in the argument ; 
a hump in the shoulder will appear in the speech 
and handiwork. If his mind could be seen, the 
hump would be seen. If a man has a seesaw in 
his voice, it will run into his sentences, into his 
poem, into the structure of his fable, into his specu- 
lation, into his charity. And, as every man is 
hunted by his own daemon, vexed by his own dis- 
ease, this checks all his activity. 

So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. 



FATE. 39 

A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more trucu- 
lent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my 
leaves. Such an one has curculios, borers, knife- 
worms : a swindler ate him first, then a client, 
then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, 
bitter and selfish as Moloch. 

This correlation really existing can be divined. 
If the threads are there, thought can follow and 
show tnem. Especially when a soul is quick and 
docile ; as Chaucer sings, 

" Or if the soul of proper kind 
Be so perfect as men find, 
That it wot what is to come, 
And that he warneth all and some 
Of every of their aventures, 
By previsions or figures; 
But that our flesh hath not might 
It to understand aright 
For it is warned too darkly." — 

Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, 
omen, periodicity, and presage : they meet the 
person they seek ; what their companion prepares 
to say to them, they first say to him ; and a hun- 
dred signs apprise them of what is about to befall. 
Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful con- 
stancy in the design this vagabond life admits. We 
wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year 
after year we find two men, two women, without 
legal or carnal tie, spend a great part of their best 
time within a few feet of each other. And the 



40 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

moral is, that what we seek we shall find ; what 
we flee from flees from us ; as Goethe said, " what 
we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in 
old age," too often cursed with the granting of our 
prayer : and hence the high caution, that, since 
we are sure of having what we wish, we beware 
to ask only for high things. 

One key, one solution to the mysteries of human 
condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, 
freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propound- 
ing, namely, of the double consciousness. A man 
must ride alternately on the horses of his private 
and his public nature, as the equestrians in the 
circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, 
or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other 
foot on the back of the other. So when a man is 
the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins, and 
cramp in his mind ; a club-foot and a club in his 
wit ; a sour face, and a selfish temper ; a strut in 
his gait, and a conceit in his affection ; or is ground 
to powder by the vice of his race ; he is to rally on 
his relation to the Universe, which his ruin benefits. 
Leaving the dasmon who suffers, he is to take sides 
with the Deity who secures universal benefit by his 
pain. 

To offset the drag of temperament and race, 
which pulls down, learn this lesson, namely, tliat 
by the cunning co-presence of two elements, which 
is throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes 



FATE. 41 

you, draws in with it the divinity, in some form, to 
repay. A good intention clothes itself with sudden 
power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or 
pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and 
serve him for a horse. 

Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity wdiich 
holds nature and souls in perfect solution, and com- 
pels every atom to serve an universal end. I do 
not wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer land- 
scape, or the glory of the stars ; but at the necessity 
of beauty under which the universe lies ; that all 
is and must be pictorial ; that the rainbow, and 
the curve of the horizon, and the arch of the blue 
vault are only results from the organism of the eye. 
There is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to 
admire a garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or 
a waterfall, when I cannot look without seeing 
splendor and grace. How idle to choose a random 
sparkle here or there, when the indwelling neces- 
sity plants the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos, 
and discloses the central intention of Nature to be 
harmony and joy. 

Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. 
If we thought men were free in the sense, that, in 
a single exception one fantastical will could prevail 
over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's 
hand could pull down the sun. If, in the least par- 
ticular, one could derange the order of nature, — - 
who would accept the gift of life ? 



42 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, 
which secures that all is made of one piece ; that 
plaintiff and defendant, fiiend and enemy, animal 
and planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In 
astronomy, is vast space, but no foreign system ; in 
geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day. 
Why should we be afraid of Nature, which is no 
other than " philosophy and theology embodied " ? 
Why should we fear to be crushed by savage ele- 
ments, we who are made up of the same elements ? 
Let us build to the Beautiful Necessity, which 
makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun 
a danger that is appointed, nor incur one that is 
not ; to the Necessity which iTidely or softly edu- 
cates him to the perception that there are no con- 
tingencies ; that Law rules throughout existence, a 
Law which is not intelligent but intelligence, — 
not personal nor impersonal, — it disdains words 
and passes understanding ; it dissolves persons ; it 
vivifies nature ; yet solicits the pure in heart tc 
draw on all its omnipotence. 



IL 

POWER 



His tongue was framed to music, 
And his hand was armed with skill, 
His face was the mould of beauty, 
And his heart the throne of will. 



POWER. 

There is not yet any inventory of a man's fac- 
ulties, any more than a bible of his opinions. Who 
shall set a limit to the influence of a human being ? 
There are men, who, by their sympathetic attrac- 
tions, carry nations with them, and lead the activity 
of the human race. And if there be such a tie, 
that, wherever the mind of man goes, nature will 
accompany him, perhaps there are men whose mag- 
netisms are of that force to draw material and ele- 
mental powers, and, where they appear, immense 
instrumentalities organize around them. Life is a 
search after power ; and this is an element with 
which the world is so saturated, — there is no chink 
or crevice in which it is not lodged, — that no hon- 
est seeking goes unrewarded. A man should prize 
events and possessions as the ore in which this fine 
mineral is found ; and he can well afford to let 
events and possessions, and the breath of the body 
go, if their value has been added to him in the shape 
of power. If he have secured the elixir, he can 
spare the wide gardens from which it was distilled. 
A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to per- 



46 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

form, is tlie end to which nature works, and tlie 
education of the will is the flowering and result of 
all this geology and astronomy. 

All successful men have agreed in one thing, — 
they were caiisationists. They believed that things 
went not by luck, but by law ; that there was not 
a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the 
first and last of things. A belief in causality, or 
strict connection between every trifle and the prin- 
ciple of being, and, in consequence, belief in com- 
pensation, or, that nothing is got for nothing, — 
characterizes all valuable minds, and must control 
every effort that is made by an industrious one. 
The most valiant men are the best believers in 
the tension of the laws. " All the great cap- 
tains," said Bonaparte, " have performed vast 
achievements by conforming with the rules of the 
art, — by adjusting efforts to obstacles." 

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the 
other, as the young orators describe ; — the key to 
all ages is — Imbecility ; imbecility in the vast 
majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, 
in all but certain emment moments ; victims of 
gravity, custom, and fear. This gives force to the 
strong, — that the multitude have no habit of self- 
reliance or original action. 

We must reckon success a constitutional trait. 
Courage, — the old physicians taught, (and their 
meaning holds, if their physiology is a little myth 



POWER. 47 

ical,) — courage, or the degree of life, is as the de- 
gree of circulation of the blood in the arteries. 
" During passion, anger, fury, trials of strength, 
wrestling, fighting, a large amount of blood is col- 
lected in the arteries, the maintenance of bodily 
strength requiring it, and but little is sent into the 
veins. This condition is constant with intrepid 
persons." Where the arteries hold their blood, is 
courage and adventure possible. Where they pour 
it unrestrained into the veins, the spirit is low and 
feeble. For performance of great mark, it needs 
extraordinary health. If Eric is in robust health, 
and has slept well, and is at the top of his con- 
dition, and thirty years old, at his departure from 
Greenland, he will steer west, and his ships will 
reach Newfoundland. But take out Eric, and put 
in a stronger and bolder man, — Biorn, or Thorfin, 
— • and the ships will, with just as much ease, 
sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred 
miles further, and reach Labrador and New Eng- 
land. There is no chance in results. With adults, 
as with children, one class enter cordially into the 
game, and whirl with the whirling world ; the 
others have cold hands, and remain bystanders ; or 
are only dragged in by the humor and vivacity of 
those who can carry a dead weight. The first 
wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and 
cannot serve any one : it must husband its resources 
to live. But health or fulness answers Its own ends, 



48 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and has to spare, runs over, and inundates tlie neigh- 
borhoods and creeks of other men's necessities. 

All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature 
of the world. The mind that is parallel with the 
laws of nature Avill be in the current of events, and 
strong with their strength. One man is made of 
the same stuff of which events are made ; is in 
sympathy with the course of things ; can predict it. 
Whatever befalls, befalls him first ; so that he is 
equal to whatever shall happen. A man who knows 
men, can talk well on politics, trade, law, war, re- 
ligion. For, everywhere, men are led in the same 
manners. 

The advantage of a strong pulse is not to be sup- 
plied by any labor, art, or concert. It is like the 
climate, which easily rears a crop, which no glass, 
or irrigation, or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere 
rival. It is like the opportunity of a city like New 
York, or Constantinople, which needs no diplomacy 
to force capital or genius or labor to it. They come 
of themselves, as the waters flow to it. So a broad, 
healthy, massive understanding seems to lie on the 
shore of unseen rivers, of unseen oceans, whicli are 
covered with barks, that, night and day, are drifted 
to this point. That is poured into its lap, which 
other men lie plotting for. It is in everybody's 
bccret ; anticipates everybody's discovery ; and if it 
do not command every fact of the genius and the 
scholar, it is because it is large and sluggish, and 



POWER. 40 

does not l\iink tliem worth the exertion which j^ou 
do. 

This affirmative force is in one, and is not in 
another, as one horse has the spring in liim, and 
another in the whip. " On the neck of the young 
man," said Hafiz, " sparkles no gem so gracious as 
enterprise." Import into any stationary district, 
as into an okl Dutch population in New York or 
Pennsylvania, or among the planters of Virginia, 
a colony of hardy Yankees, with seething brains, 
heads full of steam-hammer, pulley, crank, and 
toothed wheel, — and everything begins to shine 
with values. Wliat enhancement to all the water 
and land in England, is the arrival of James Watt 
or Brunei ! In every company, there is not only 
the active and passive sex, but, in both men and 
women, a deeper and more important sex of mind, 
namely, the inventive or creative class of both men 
and women, and the uninventive or accepting class. 
Each plus man represents his set, and, if he have 
the accidental advantage of personal ascendericy, — 
which implies neither more nor less of talent, but 
merely the temperamental or taming eye of a soldier 
or a schoolmaster, (which one has, and one has not, 
as one has a black moustache and one a blond,) 
then quite easily and without envy or resistance, all 
his coadjutors and feeders will admit his right to 
absorb them. The merchant works by book-keeper 
and cashier ; the lawyer's authorities are hunted up 



50 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

by clerks ; the geologist reports the surveys of his 
subalterns ; Commander Wilkes appropriates the 
results of all the naturalists attached to the Expe- 
dition ; Thorwaldsen's statue is finished by stone- 
cutters ; Dumas has journeymen ; and Shakspeare 
was theatre-manager, and used the labor of many 
young men, as well as the playbooks. 

There is always room for a man of force, and 
he makes room for many. Society is a troop of 
thinkers, and the best heads among them take the 
best places. A feeble man can see the farms that 
are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. 
The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. 
His eye makes estates, as fast as the sun breeds 
clouds. 

When a new boy comes into school, when a 
man travels, and encounters strangers every day, 
or, when into any old club a new comer is domes- 
ticated, that happens which befalls, when a strange 
ox is driven into a pen or pasture where cattle are 
kept; there is at once a trial of strength between 
the best pair of horns and the new comer, and it is 
settled thenceforth which is the leader. So now, 
there is a measuring of strength, very courteous, 
but decisive, and an acquiescence thenceforward 
when these two meet. Each reads his fate in the 
other's eyes. The weaker party finds, that none 
of his information or wit quite fits the occasion. 
He thouo;ht he knew this or that : he finds that he 



POWER. 51 

omitted to learn the end of it. Nothing that he 
knows will quite hit the mark, whilst all the rival's 
arrows are good, and well thro^vn. But if he knew 
all the facts in the encyclopaedia, it would not help 
him : for this is an affair of presence of mind, of 
attitude, of aplomb : the opponent has the sun and 
wind, and, in every cast, the choice of weapon and 
mark ; and, when he himself is matched with some 
other antagonist, his own shafts fly well and hit. 
'Tis a question of stomach and constitution. The 
second man is as good as the first, — perhaps better; 
but has not stoutness or stomach, as the first has, 
and so his wit seems over-fine or under-fine. 

Health is good, — power, life, that resists disease, 
poison, and all enemies, and is conservative, as 
well as creative. Here is question, every spring, 
whether to graft with wax, or whether with clay ; 
whether to whitewash or to potash, or to prune ; but 
the one point is the thrifty tree. A good tree, that 
agrees with the soil, will grow in spite of blight, or 
bug, or pruning, or neglect, by night and by day, in 
all weathers and all treatments. Vivacity, leader- 
ship, must be had, and we are not allowed to be 
nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump with 
dirty water, if clean cannot be had. If we will 
make bi3ad, we must have contagion, yeast, empty- 
ings, or what not, to induce fermentation into the 
dough : as the torpid artist seeks inspiration at any 
cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by 



52 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

prayer or by wine. And we have a certain instinct, 
that where is great amount of hfe, though gross and 
peccant, it has its own checks and purifications, and 
will be found at last in harmony wdth moral laws. 

"We watch in children with pathetic interest, the 
degree in w^hich they possess recuperative force. 
When they are hurt by us, or by each other, or go 
to the bottom of the class, or miss the annual prizes, 
or are beaten in the game, — if they lose heart, and 
remember the mischance in their chamber at home, 
they have a serious check. But if they have the 
buoyancy and resistance that preoccupies them -with 
new interest in the new moment, — the wounds 
cicatrize, and the fibre is the tougher for the hurt. 

One comes to value this plus health, when he 
sees that all difficulties vanish before it. A timid 
man listenino; to the alarmists in Congress, and in 
the newspapers, and observing the profligacy of 
party, — sectional interests urged wdth a fury w^hich 
shuts its eyes to consequences, with a mind made 
up to desperate extremities, ballot in one hand, and 
rifle in the other, — might easily believe that he 
and his country have seen their best days, and he 
hardens himself the best he can against the com- 
ing ruin. But, after tliis has been foretold with 
equal confldence fifty times, and government six per 
cents have not declined a quarter of a mill, he dis- 
covers that the enormous elements of strength 
which are here in play, make our politics unim- 



POWER. 53 

portant. Personal power, freedom, and the re- 
sources of nature strain every faculty of every 
citizen. We prosper with such vigor, that, hke 
thrifty trees, which grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, 
and borers, so we do not suffer from the profligate 
swarms that fatten on the national treasury. The 
huge animals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor 
of the disease attests the strength of the constitu- 
tion. The same energy in the Greek Demos drew 
the remark, that the evils of popular government 
appear greater than they are ; there is compensa- 
tion for them in the spirit and energy it awakens. 
The rough and ready style which belongs to a 
people of sailors, foresters, farmers, and mechanics, 
has its advantages. Power educates the potentate. 
As long as our people quote English standards 
they dwarf their own proportions. A Western 
lawyer of eminence said to me he wished it were 
a penal offence to bring an English law-book into a 
court in this country, so pernicious had he found in 
his experience our deference to English precedent. 
The very word ' commerce ' has only an English 
meaning, and is pinched to the cramp exigencies 
of English experience. The commerce of rivers, 
th3 commerce of railroads, and who knows but the 
commerce of air-balloons, must add an American 
extension to the pond-hole of admiralty. As long 
as our people quote English standards, they will miss 
khe sovereignty of power; but let these rough riders. 



54 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

— legislators in shirt-sleeves, — Hoosier, Sucker, 
Wolverine, Badger, — or whatever hard head Ar- 
kansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, half orator, half 
assassin, to represent its wi*ath and cupidity at 
Washington, — let these drive as they may; and 
the disposition of territories and public lands, the 
necessity of balancmg and keeping at bay the 
snarling majorities of German, Irish, and of na- 
tive millions, will bestow promptness, address, and 
reason, at last, on our buffalo-hunter, and authority 
and majesty of manners. The instinct of the people 
is right. Men expect from good whigs, put into 
office by the respectability of the country, much less 
skill to deal with Mexico, Spain, Britain, or with 
our own malcontent members, than from some 
strong transgressor, like Jefferson, or Jackson, who 
first conquers his own government, and then uses 
the same genius to conquer the foreigner. The 
senators who dissented from Mr. Polk's Mexican 
war, were not those who knew better, but those 
who, from political position, could afford it ; not 
Webster, but Benton and Calhoun. 

This power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. 
'Tis the power of Lynch law, of soldiers and pi- 
rates ; and it bulhes the peaceable and loyal. But 
it brings its own antidote ; and here is my point, — 
that all kinds of power usually emerge at the same 
time ; good energy, and bad ; power of mind, with 
physical health ; the ecstasies of devotion, with the 



POWER. 55 

exasperations of debauchery. The same elements 
are always present, only sometimes these con- 
spicuous, and sometimes those ; what was yesterday 
foreground, being to-day background, — what was 
surface, playing now a not less effective part as 
basis. The longer the drought lasts, the more is 
the atmosphere surcharged with water. The faster 
the ball falls to the sun, the force to fly off is by so 
mucli augmented. And, in morals, wild liberty 
breeds iron conscience ; natures with great impulses 
have great resources, and return from far. In poli- 
tics, the sons of democrats will be wliigs ; whilst red 
republicanism, in the father, is a spasm of nature 
to engender an intolerable tyrant in the next age. 
On the other hand, conservatism, ever more tim- 
orous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives 
them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism. 

Those who have most of this coarse energy, — 
the ' bruisers,' who have run the gamitlet of caucus 
and tavern through the county or the state, have 
their own vices, but they have the good nature of 
strength and courage. Fierce and unscrupulous, 
they are usually frank and direct, and above false- 
hood. Our politics fall into bad hands, and churcli- 
mcn and men of refinement, it seems agreed, are 
not fit persons to send to Congress. Politics is a 
deleterious profession, like some poisonous handi- 
2rafts. Men in power have no opinions, but may 
be had cheap for any opinion, for any purpose, — 



56 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and if it be only a question between tlie mcist civil 
and tlie most forcible, I lean to the last. These 
Hooslers and Suckers are really better than the 
snivelling opposition. Their wrath is at least of a 
bold and manly cast. They see, against the unani- 
mous declarations of the people, how much crime 
the people will bear; they proceed from step to step, 
and they have calculated but too justly upon their 
Excellencies, the New England governors, and upon 
their Honors, the New England legislators. The 
messao-es of the p-overnors and the resolutions of the 
legislatures, are a proverb for expressing a sham vir- 
tuous indignation, which, in the course of events, 
is sure to be belied. 

In trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace 
of ferocity. Philanthropic and religious bodies do 
not commonly make their executive officers out 
of saints. The communities hitherto founded by 
Socialists, — the Jesuits, the Port-Royalists, the 
American communities at New Harmony, at Brook 
Farm, at Zoar, are only possible, by installing Judas 
as steward. The rest of the offices may be filled 
by good burgesses. The pious and charitable pro- 
prietor has a foreman not quite so pious and char- 
itable. The most amiable of country gentlemen has 
a certain pleasure in the teeth of the bull-dog which 
guards his orchard. Of the Shaker society, it was 
formerly a sort of proverb in the country, that they 
always sent the devil to market. And in repre- 



POWER. 57 

Dentations of the Deity, painting, poetry, and pop- 
ular religion have ever drawn the wrath from Hell. 
It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little 
wickedness is good to make muscle ; as if conscience 
were not good for hands and legs, as if poor de- 
cayed formalists of law and order cannot run like 
wild goats, wolves, and conies ; that, as there is a 
use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot 
move "STithout rogues ; that public spirit and the 
ready hand are as well found among the malig- 
nants. 'Tis not very rare, the coincidence of sharp 
private and political practice, with public spirit, and 
good neighborhood. 

I knew a burly Boniface who for many years 
kept a public-house in one of our rural capitals. 
He was a knaA'e whom the town could ill spare. 
He was a social, vascular creature, grasping and 
selfish. There was no crime which he did not or 
could not commit. But he made good friends of 
the selectmen, served them with his best chop, when 
they supped at his house, and also with his honoi 
the Judge, he was very cordial, grasping his hand. 
He introduced all the fiends, male and female, into 
the town, and united in his person the functions of 
bidly, incendiary, swindler, barkeeper, and burglar. 
He girdled the trees, and cut off the horses' tails of 
the temperance people, in the night. He led the 
rummies ' and radicals in town-meeting with a 
iSpeech. Meantime, lie was civil, fat, and easy, in 

3 * 



58 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

his house, and precisely the most pubHc-spirited 
citizen. He was active in getting the roads re- 
paired and phmted with shade-trees ; he subscribed 
for the fountains, the gas, and the telegraph ; he 
mtroduced the new horse-rake, the new scraper, the 
baby-jumper, and what not, that Connecticut sends 
to the admiring citizens. He did this the easier, 
that the peddler stopped at his house, and paid his 
keeping, by setting up his new trap on the land- 
lord's premises. 

Whilst thus the energy for originating and exe- 
cuting work, deforms itself by excess, and so our 
axe chops off our own fingers, — this evil is not 
without remedy. All the elements whose aid man 
calls in, will sometimes become his masters, espe- 
cially those of most subtle force. Shall he, then, 
renounce steam, fire, and electricity, or, shall he 
learn to deal with them ? The rule for this whole 
class of agencies is, — all plus is good ; only put 
it in the right place. 

Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot 
live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies ; cannot read 
novels, and play whist ; cannot satisfy all their 
wants at the Thursday Lecture, or the Boston 
Athenaeum. They pine for adventure, and must 
go to Pike's Peak ; had rather die by the hatchet 
of a Pawnee, than sit all day and every day at a 
counting-room desk. They are made for war, for 
the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing ; for 



POWER. 59 

hair-breadth adventures, huge risks, and the joy of 
eventful living. Some men cannot endure an hour 
of calm at sea. I remember a poor Malay cook, on 
board a Liverpool packet, who, when the wind blew 
a gale, could not contain his joy ; " Blow ! " he 
cried, " me do tell you, blow ! " Their friends and 
governors must see that some vent for thcii ex- 
plosive complexion is provided. The roisters who 
are destined for infamy at home, if sent to Mexico, 
will " cover you with glory," and come back heroes 
and generals. There are Oregons, Californias, 
and Exploring Expeditions enough appertaining to 
America, to find them in files to gnaw, and in 
crocodiles to eat. The young English are fine ani- 
mals, full of blood, and when they have no wars to 
breathe their riotous valors in, they seek for travels 
as dangerous as war, diving into Maelstroms ; swim- 
ming Hellesponts ; wading up the snowy Himmaleh ; 
hunting lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in South Africa ; 
gypsy ing with Borrow in Spain and Algiers ; riding 
alii orators in South America with Waterton ; util- 
izing Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with Layard ; 
yachting among the icebergs of Lancaster Sound ; 
peeping into craters on the equator ; or running on 
the creases of Malays in Borneo. 

The excess of virility has the same importance 
in general history, as in private and industrial life. 
Strong race or strong individual rests at last on nat- 
ural forces, which are best in the savage, who, like 



60 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the beasts around liim, is still in reception of the 
milk from the teats of Natm-e. Cut oif the con- 
nection between any of our works, and this aborig- 
inal source, and the w^ork is shallow. The people 
lean on this, and the mob is not quite so bad an 
rirgament as we sometimes say, for it has this good 
side. '* March without the people," said a French 
deputy from the tribune, " and you march into 
night : their instincts are a finger-pointing of Provi- 
dence, always turned toward real benefit. But 
wdien you espouse an Orleans party, or a Bourbon, 
or a Montalembert party, or any other but an or- 
ganic party, though you mean well, you have a per- 
sonality instead of a principle, which will inevitably 
di'ag you into a corner." 

The best anecdotes of this force are to be had 
from savage life, in explorers, soldiers, and bucca- 
neers. But who cares for fallino-s-out of assassins, 
and fights of bears, or grindings of icebergs ? Phys- 
ical force has no value, where there is nothino; 
else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and 
solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical 
countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire 
is, to have a little on our hearth : and of electricity, 
not volleys of the charged cloud, but the manage- 
able stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, 
or energ}' ; the rests or remains of it in the civil 
and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in tha 
. Pacific. 



POWER. 61 

111 history, the great moment is, when the savage 
IS just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy 
Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense 
of beauty ; — and you have Pericles and Phidias, 
— not yet passed over into the Corinthian civil- 
ity. Everything good in nature and the world 
is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy 
juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their 
astringency or acridity is got out by ethics and 
humanity. 

The triumphs of peace have been in some prox- 
imity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar 
with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp 
were still visible in tlie port and complexion of the 
gentleman, his intellectual power culminated : the 
compression and tension of these stern conditions is 
a training for the finest and softest arts, and can 
rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by 
some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as 
hardy as war. 

We say that success is constitutional ; depends on 
a ^:)?MS condition of mind and body, on power of 
work, on courage : that it is of main efficacy in car- 
rying on tlie world, and, though rarely found in the 
light state for an article of commerce, but oftener in 
the supersaturate or excess, which makes it danger- 
ous and destructive, yet it cannot be spared, and 
must be had in that form, and absorbents provided 
to take off its edge. 



G2 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

The affirmative class monopolize the homage of 
mankind. They originate and execute all the great 
feats. What a force was coiled up in the skull of 
Napoleon ! Of the sixty thousand men making his 
army at Eylau, it seems some thirty thousand were 
thieves and burglars. The men whom, in peaceful 
communities, we hold if we can, with iron at their 
legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this 
man dealt with, hand to hand, dragged them to 
their duty, and won his victories by their bayonets. 

This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure 
when it appears under conditions of supreme refine- 
ment, as in the proficients in high art. When 
Michel Angelo was forced to paint the Sistine 
Chapel in fresco, of which art he knew nothing, 
he went down into the Pope's gardens behind the 
Vatican, and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and 
yellow, mixed them with glue and water with his 
own hands, and having, after many trials, at last 
suited himself, climbed his ladders, and painted 
away, week after week, month after month, the 
sibyls and prophets. He surpassed his successors 
in rough vigor, as much as in purity of intellect and 
refinement. He was not crushed by his one picture 
left unfinished at last. Michel was wont to draw 
his figures first in skeleton, then to clothe them with 
flesh, and lastly to drape them. " Ah ! " said a 
brave painter to me, thinking on these things, "if 
a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed 



t'OWER. 63 

instead of working. There is no way to success in 
our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint, and 
work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every 
day." 

Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus 
or positive power : an ounce of power must balance 
an ounce of weio-ht. And, thouo;h a man cannot 
return into his mother's womb, and be bom with 
nevf amounts of vivacity, yet there are two econo- 
mies, which are the best succedanea which the case 
admits. The first is, the stopping off decisively 
our miscellaneous activity, and concentrating our 
force on one or a few points ; as the gardener, by 
severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one 
or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to 
spindle into a sheaf of twigs. 

" Enlarge not thy destiny," said the oracle : 
" endeavor not to do more than is given thee in 
charge." The one prudence in life is concentra- 
tion ; the one evil is dissipation : and it makes no 
difference whether our dissipations are coarse or 
fine ; property and its cares, friends, and a social 
habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything 
is good which takes away one plaything and delu- 
sion more, and drives us home to add one stroke 
of faithful work. Friends, books, pictures, lower 
duties, talents, flatteries, hopes, — all are distrac- 
tions which cause oscillations in our giddy balloon, 
and make a good poise and a straight course impos- 



64 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

sible. You must elect your work ; you shall take 
what your bram can, and drop all the rest. Only 
so, can that amount of vital force accumulate, which 
can make the step from knowing to doing. No mat- 
ter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the 
step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. 'Tis a 
sti)p out of a chalk circle of imbecility into fruitful- 
ness. Many an artist lacking this, lacks all : he sees 
the masculine Angelo or Cellini with despair. He, 
too, is up to Nature and the First Cause in hia 
thought. But the spasm to collect and swing his 
whole being into one act, he has not. The poet 
Campbell said, that " a man accustomed to work 
was equal to any achievement he resolved on, and, 
that, for himself, necessity not inspiration was the 
prompter of his muse." 

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, 
in war, in trade, in short, in all management of hu- 
man affairs. One of the high anecdotes of the 
world is the reply of Newton to the inquiry, " how 
he had been able to achieve his discoveries ? " — 
" By always intending my mind." Or if you will 
have a text from politics, take this from Plutarch : 
" There was, in the whole city, but one street in 
which Pericles was ever seen, the street which led 
to the market-place and the council liouse. He 
declined all invitations to banquets, and all gay 
assemblies and company. During the whole period 
of his admmistration, he ne^'er dined at the table 



POWER. 65 

of a friend." Or if we seek an example from trade, 

— "I hope," said a good man to Rotlischild, " your 
children are not too fond of money and business : 
I am sure you would not wish that." — "I am 
sure I should wish that : I wish them to give 
mind, soul, heart, and body to business, — that is 
the way to be happy. It requires a great deal of 
boldness and a great deal of caution, to make a 
great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires 
ten times as much wit to keep it. If I were to 
listen to all the projects proposed to me, I should 
ruin myself very soon. Stick to one business, 
young man. Stick to your brewery, (he said this 
to young Buxton,) and you will be the great brewer 
of London. Be brewer, and banker, and merchant, 
and manufacturer, and you will soon be in the 
Gazette." 

Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive 
and tenacious, but they do not rush to a decision. 
But in our flowing affairs a decision must be made, 

— the best, if you can ; but any is better than 
none. There are twenty ways of going to a point, 
and one is the shortest ; but set cut at once on 
one. A man who has that presence of mind which 
can bring to him on the instant all he knows, is 
worth for action a dozen men who know as much, 
but can only bring it to light slowly. The good 
Speaker in tlie House is not the man who knows 
the theory of parliamentary tactics, but the man 



66 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

who decides ofF-liand. The good judge is not 
he who does hair-sphtting justice to every allega- 
tion, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules 
somethinor intelliiiible for the 2;uidance of suitors. 
The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to 
every side and angle of contingency, and quahfies 
all his qualifications, but who throws himself on 
your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a 
scrape. Dr. Johnson said, in one of his flowing 
sentences, " Miserable beyond all names of wretch- 
edness is that unhappy pair, who are doomed to 
reduce beforehand to the principles of abstract rea- 
son all the details of each domestic day. There are 
cases where little can be said, and much must be 
done." 

The second substitute for temperament is drill, 
the power of use and routine. The hack is a better 
roadster than the Arab barb. In chemistry, the 
galvanic stream, slow, but continuous, is equal in 
power to the electric spark, and is, in our arts, 
a better agent. So in human action, against the 
spasm of energy, we offset the continuity of drill. 
We spread the same amount of force over much 
time, instead of condensing it into a moment. 'Tis 
the same ounce of gold here in a ball, and there in 
a leaf. At West Point, Col. Buford, the chief en- 
gineer, pounded Avith a hammer on the trunnions of 
a cannon, until he broke them off. He fired a piece 
of ordnance some hundred times in swift succession, 



POWER. 67 

Ut./il it burst. Now which stroke broke the trun- 
nion ? Every stroke. Which blast burst the piece ? 
Every blast. " Diligence passe sensj'' Henry 
VIII. was wont to say, or, great is drill. John 
Kemble said, that the worst piovincial company 
of actors would go through a play better than 
the best amateur company. Basil Hall likes to 
show that the worst regular troops will beat the 
best volunteers. Practice is nine tenths. A course 
of mobs is good practice for orators. All the 
great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stump- 
ing it through England for seven years, made 
Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it 
throuo'h New EnHand for twice seven, trained 
Wendell Phillips. The way to learn German, 
is, to read the same dozen pages over and over 
a hundred times, till you know every word and 
particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat 
them by heart. No genius can recite a ballad at 
first reading, so well as mediocrity can at the fif- 
teenth or twentieth reading. The rule for hospi- 
tality and Irish 'help,' is, to have the same dinner 
every day throughout the year. At last, Mrs. 
O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it to a nicety, the 
host learns to carve it, and the guests are well 
served. A humorous friend of mine thinks, that 
the reason why Nature is so perfect in her art, and 
gets up such inconceivably fine sunsets, is, that she 
has learned how, at last, by dint of doing the same 



68 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

tiling so very often. Cannot one converse better 
on a topic on which he has experience, than on one 
whicli is new ? Men whose opinion is vahied on 
'Change, are only such as have a special experience, 
and off that ground their opinion is not valuable, 
'' j\Iore are made good by exercitation, than by na- 
ture," said Democritus. The friction in nature is 
so enonnous that we cannot spare any power. It 
is not question to express our thought, to elect our 
way, but to overcome resistances of the medium 
and material in everything we do. Hence the use 
of drill, and the worthlessness of amateurs to cope 
with practitioners. Six hours every day at the 
piano, only to give facility of touch ; six hours a 
day at painting, only to give command of the odious 
materials, oil, ochres, and brushes. The masters 
say, that they know a master in music, only by see- 
ing the pose of the hands on the keys ; — so difficult 
and vital an act is the command of the instru- 
ment. To have learned the use of the tools, by 
thousands of manipulations ; to have learned the 
arts of reckoning, by endless adding and dividing, 
is the power of the mechanic and the clerk. 

I remarked in England, in confirmation of a fre- 
quent experience at home, that, in literary circles, 
the men of trust and consideration, bookmakers, 
editors, university deans and professors, bishops, too, 
were by no means men of the largest literary tal- 
ent, but usually of a lo^^ and ordinary intellectual- 



POWER. 69 

ity, with a sort of mercantile actmty and working 
talent. Indifferent hacks and mediocrities tower, 
by pushing their forces to a lucrative point, or by 
working power, over multitudes of superior men, in 
Old as in New England. 

I have not foro-otten that there are sublime con- 
siderations which limit the value of talent and super- 
ficial success. We can easily overpraise the vulgar 
hero. There are sources on which we have not 
drawn. I know what I abstain from. I adjourn 
what I have to say on this topic to the chapters on 
Culture and Worship. But this force or spirit, be- 
ing the means relied on by Nature for bringing the 
work of the day about, — as far as we attach im- 
portance to household life, and the prizes of the 
world, we must respect that. And I hold, that an 
economy may be applied to it ; it is as much a sub- 
ject of exact law and arithmetic as fluids and gases 
are ; it may be husbanded, or wasted ; every man 
is efficient only as he is a container or vessel of this 
force, and never was any signal act or achievement in 
history, but by this expenditure. This is not gold, 
but the gold-maker ; not the fame, but the exploit. 

If these forces and this husbandry are within 
reach of our will, and the laws of them can be read, 
we infer that all success, and all conceivable benefit 
for man, is also, first or last, within his reach, and 
has its own sublime economies by which it may be 
attained. The world is mathematical, and has no 



70 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve. Success 
has no more eccentricity, than the gingham and 
muslin we weave in our mills. I know no more 
affecting lesson to our busy, plotting New England 
brains, than to go into one of the factories with 
which we have lined all the watercourses in the 
States. A man hardly knows how much he is a 
machine, until he begins to make telegraph, loom, 
press, and locomotive, in his own image. But in 
these, he is forced to leave out his follies and hin- 
drances, so that when we go to the mill, the ma- 
chine is more moral than we. Let a man dare 
go to a loom, and see if he be equal to it. Let 
machine confront machine, and see how they come 
out. The world-mill is more complex than the 
calico-mill, and the architect stooped less. In the 
gingham-mill, a broken thread or a shred spoils the 
web through a piece of a hundred yards, and is 
traced back to the girl that wove it, and lessens her 
wages. The stockholder, on being shown this, rubs 
his hands with delight. Are you so cunning, Mr. 
Prolitloss, and do you expect to swindle your 
master and employer, in the web you weave ? A 
day is a more magnificent cloth than any muslin, 
the mechanism that makes it is infinitely cunninger, 
and you shall not conceal the sleezy, fraudulent, 
rotten hours you have slipped into the j)iece, nor 
fear that any honest thread, or straighter steel, or 
more inflexible shaft, will not testify in the web. 



HI. 

WEALTH. 



Who shall tell what did befall, 
Far away in time, when once, 
Over the lifeless ball, 
Hung idle stars and suns ? 
What god the element obeyed ? 
Wings of what wind the lichen bore, 
Wafting the puny seeds of power, 
Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade i 
And well the primal pioneer 
Knew the strong task to it assigned 
Patient through Heaven's enormous year 
To build in matter home for mind. 
From air the creeping centuries drew 
The matted thicket low and wide, 
This must the leaves of ages strew 
The granite slab to clothe and hide. 
Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. 
Wliat smiths, and in what furnace, rolled 
(In dizzy aeons dim and mute 
The reeling brain can ill compute) 
Copper and iron, lead, and gold ? 
W^hat oldest star the fame can save 
Of races perishing to pave 



72 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Tlie planet with a floor of lime ? 

Dust is their pyi-amid and mole: 

Wiio saw what ferns and palms were pressed 

Under the tumbling mountain's breast, 

In the safe herbal of the coal ? 

But when the quarried means were piled, 

All is waste and worthless, till 

Arrives the wise selecting will. 

And, out of slime and chaos. Wit 

Draws the threads of fair and fit. 

Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, 

The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; 

Then flew the sail across the seas 

To feed the North from tropic trees; 

The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, 

AVhere they were bid the rivers ran ; 

Kew slaves fulfilled the poet's dream. 

Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 

Then docks were built, and crops were stored} 

And ingots added to the hoard. 

But, though light-headed man forget, 

Remembering Matter pays her debt : 

Still, through her motes and masses, draw 

Electric thrills and ties of Law, 

Which bind the strengths of Nature wild 

To the conscience of a child. 



WEALTH. 

As soon as a stranger is introduced into any 
company, one of the first questions wliicli all -wish 
to have answered, is. How does that man get his 
livmg? And with reason. He is no whole man 
until lie knows how to earn a blameless livelihood. 
Society is barbarous, until every industrious man 
can get his living without dishonest customs. 

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a 
producer. He fails to make his place good in the 
world, unless he not only pays his debt, but also 
adds something to the common wealth. Nor can he 
do justice to his genius, without making some larger 
demand on the world than a bare subsistence. He 
is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich. 

Wealth has its source in applications of the mind 
to nature, from the rudest strokes of spade and axo, 
up to the last secrets of art. Intimate ties subsist 
between thought and all production ; because a 
better order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute 
labor. The forces and the resistances are Nature's, 
but the mind acts in brinmno; things from where 
they abound to where they are wanted ; in wise 

4 



74 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

combining; in directing the practice of the useful 
arts, and in the creation of finer vahics, by fine art, 
by eloquence, by song, or the reproductions of mem- 
ory. Wealth is in applications of mind to nature , 
and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, 
much less in saving, but in a better order, in time- 
liness, in being at the right sjoot. One man h.is 
stronger arms, or longer legs ; another sees by the 
course of streams, and growth of markets, where 
land will be wanted, makes a clearing to the river, 
goes to sleep, and wakes up rich. Steam is no 
stronger now, than it was a hundred years ago ; 
but is put to better use. A clever fellow was 
acquainted with the ex}>ansive force of steam ; he 
also saw the wealth of wheat and ffrass rottino; 
in jNIichigan. Then he cunningly screws on the 
steam-pipe to the wheat-crop. Puif now, O Steam ! 
The steam puffs and expands as before, but this 
time it is drao^mno; all Michio;an at its back to 
hungry New York and hungry England. Coal lay 
in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a 
laborer with pick and Avindlass brings it to the sur- 
face. We may well call it black diamonds. Every 
basket is power and civilization. For coal is a port- 
able climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to 
Labrador and the })olar circle : and it is the means 
of transporting itself Avhithersoever it is wanted. 
Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of man- 
kind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal ivill draw 



WEALTH. 75 

two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by 
boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and 
with its comfort brings its industrial power. 

When the farmer's peaches are taken from under 
the tree, and carried into town, they have a new 
look, and a hundredfold value over the fruit which 
grew on the same bough, and lies fulsomely on the 
ground. The craft of the merchant is this bringing 
a thing from where it abounds, to where it is costly. 

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the 
rain and wind out ; in a good pump that yields 
you plenty of sweet water ; in two suits of clothes, 
so to change your dress when you are wet ; in 
dry sticks to burn ; in a good double-wick lamp ; 
and three meals ; in a horse, or a locomotive, to 
cross the land ; in a boat to cross the sea ; in tools 
to work with ; in books to read ; and so, in giving, 
on all sides, by tools and auxiliaries, the greatest 
possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, 
and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, 
and knowledge, and good-will. 

Wealtli begins with these articles of necessity. 
And here we must recite the iron law which Na- 
ture thunders in these northern climates. First, 
she requires that each man should feed himself. 
If, happily, his fathers have left him no inher- 
itance, he must go to work, and by malting his 
wants less, or his gains more, he must draw himself 
out of that state of pain and insult in which she 



76 CONDUCT OF LIFL. 

forces tlie beggar to lie. She gives him no rest until 
this is done : she starves, taunts, and torments him, 
takes away warmth, laughter, sleep, friends, and 
daylight, until he has fought his way to his own 
loaf. Then, less peremptorily, but still with sting 
enough, she urges him to the acquisition of such 
tlnngs as belong to him. Every warehouse and 
shop-window, every fruit-tree, every thought of 
every hour, opens a new want to him, which it 
concerns his power and dignity to gratify. It is 
of no use to argue the wants down : the philos- 
oj)hers have laid the greatness of man in making his 
wants few ; but will a man content himself with a 
hut and a handful of dried pease ? He is born to be 
rich. He is thoroughly related ; and is tem^pted out 
by his appetites and fancies to the conquest of this 
and that piece of nature, until he finds his well- 
being in the use of his planet, and of more planets 
than his own. Wealth requires, besides the crust 
of bread and the roof, — the freedom of the city, 
the freedom of the earth, travelling, machinery, the 
benefits of science, music, and fine arts, the best 
culture, and the best company. He is the rich man 
who can avail himself of all men's faculties. He is 
the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit 
from the labors of the greatest number of men, of 
men in distant countries, and in past times. The 
same correspondence that is between thirst in the 
stomach, and water in the spring, exists between 



WEALTH. 77 

the whole of man and the whole of nature. The 
elements offer their service to him. The sea, wash- 
ing tlie equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, 
and the power and empire that folio w^ it, — day 
by day to his craft and audacity. " Beware of 
me," it says, " but if you can hold me, I am the 
key to all the lands." Fire offers, on its side, an 
equal power. Fire, steam, lightning, gravity, ledges 
of rock, mines of iron, lead, quicksilver, tin, and 
gold ; forests of all woods ; fruits of all climates ; 
animals of all habits ; the powers of tillage ; the 
fabrics of his chemic laboratory ; the webs of his 
loom ; the masculine draught of his locomotive, the 
talismans of the machine-shop ; all grand and subtile 
things, minerals, gases, ethers, passions, war, trade, 
government, are his natural playmates, and, accord- 
ing to the excellence of the machinery in each 
human being, is his attraction for the instruments 
he is to employ. The world is his tool-chest, and 
he is successful, or his education is carried on just so 
far, as is the marriage of his faculties with nature, 
or, the degree in which he takes up things into 
himself. 

The strong race is strong on these terms. The 
Saxons are the merchants of the w^orld ; now, for 
a thousand years, the leading race, and by nothing 
more than their quality of personal independence, 
and, in its special modification, pecuniary independ- 
ence. No reliance for bread and games on the 



78 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

government, no clanship, no patriarchal style of 
living by the revenues of a chief, no marry ing- 
on, — no system of clientship suits them ; but every 
-man must pay his scot. The English are prosper- 
ous and peaceable, with their habit of considering 
that every man must take care of himself, and has 
himself to thank, if he do not maintain and imprr)vc 
his position in society. 

The subject of economy mixes itself with morals, 
inasmuch as it is a peremptory point of virtue that 
a man's independence be secured. Poverty demor- 
alizes. A man in debt is so far a slave ; and Wall- 
street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man 
of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing 
circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his 
integrity. And when one observes in the hotels 
and palaces of our Atlantic capitals, the habit of 
expense, the riot of the senses, the absence of bonds, 
clanship, fellow-feeling of any kind, he feels, that, 
when a man or a woman is driven to the wall, the 
chances of integrity are frightfully diminished, as 
if virtue were coming to be a luxury which few 
could afford, or, as Burke said, '' at a market almost 
too high for humanity." He may fix his inven- 
tory of necessities and of enjoyments on what scale 
he pleases, but if he wishes the power and priv- 
ileo-e of thouo;ht, the chalkino; out his own career, 
and having society on his own terms, he must 
bring his wants within his proper power to satisfy. 



WEALTH. 79 

The manly part is to do with might and main 
what you can do. The world is full of fops who 
never did anything, and who have persuaded beau- 
ties and men of genius to w^ear their fop livery, and 
these will deliver the fop opinion, that it is not 
respectable to be seen earning a living ; that it is 
much more respectable to spend \\'ithout earning; 
and this doctrine of the snake will come also from 
tli3 elect sons of light ; for wise men are not wise 
at all hours, and wall speak five times from their 
taste or their humor, to once from their reason. 
The brave workman, wdio might betray his feeling 
of it in his manners, if he do not succumb in his 
practice, must replace the grace or elegance for- 
feited, by the merit of the work done. No matter 
whether he make shoes, or statues, or laws. It is 
the privilege of any human w^ork which is well 
done to invest the doer with a certain hauo-htiness. 
He can -well afford not to conciliate, wdiose faithful 
work will answer for him. The mechanic at his 
bench carries a quiet heart and assured manners, 
and deals on even terms with men of any condition. 
1 he artist has made his picture so true, that it dis- 
CDucerts criticism. The statue is so beautifiil, that 
it contracts no stain from the market, but makes tlie 
market a silent gallery for itself. The case of the 
young lawyer was pitiful to disgust, — a paltry mat- 
ter of buttons or tweezer-cases ; but the determined 
y^outh saw in it an aperture to insert his dangerous 



80 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

wedges, made the insignificance of the thing for- 
gotten, and gave fame by his sense and energy to 
the name and affairs of the Tittleton snuffbox 
factory. 

Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is 
made a toy. The life of pleasure is so ostentatious, 
that a shallow observer must believe that this is the 
agreed best use of wealth, and, whatever is pre- 
tended, it ends in cosseting. But, if this were the 
main use of surplus capital, it would bring us to 
barricades, burned towns, and tomahawks, pres- 
ently. Men of sense esteem wealth to be the 
assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting 
of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarna- 
tion and nutriment of their desimi. Power is what 
they want, — not candy ; — power to execute their 
design, power to give legs and feet, form and ac- 
tuality to their thought, which, to a clear-sighted 
man, appears the end for which the Universe ex- 
ists, and all its resources might be well applied. 
Columbus thhiks that the sphere is a problem for 
practical navigation, as well as for closet geometry, 
and looks on all kings and peoples as cowardly 
landsmen, until they dare fit him out. Few men 
on the planet have more truly belonged to it. But 
he was forced to leave much of his map blank. 
His successors inherited his map, and inherited his 
fury to complete it. 

So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, 



WEALTH. 81 

and survey, — the monomaniacs, who talk up theii 
project m marts, and offices, and entreat men tc 
subscribe : — how did our factories get built ? how 
did North America get netted with iron rails, ex- 
cept by the importunity of these orators, who 
dragged all the prudent men in ? Is party the 
madness of many for the gain of a few ? This 
speculative genius is the madness of few for the gain 
of the world. The projectors are sacrificed, but the 
public is the gainer. Eacli of these idealists, work- 
ing after his thought, would make it tyrannical, if 
he could. He is met and antagonized by other 
speculators, as hot as he. The equilibrium is pre- 
served by these counteractions, as one tree keeps 
down another in the forest, that it may not absorb 
all the sap in the ground. And the supply in 
nature of railroad presidents, copper-miners, grand- 
junctioners, smoke-burners, fire-annihilators, &c., 
is limited by the same law which keeps the pro- 
portion in the supply of carbon, of alum, and of 
hydrogen. 

To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the 
master-works and chief men of each race. It is 
to have the sea, by voyaging ; to visit the moun- 
tains, Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, 
Constantinople ; to see galleries, libraries, arse- 
nals, manufactories. The reader of Humboldt's 
' Cosmos " follows the marches of a man whose 
eyes, ears, and mind are armed by all the science, 
4* 



82 CONDUCT OF LIF&. 

arts, and implements which mankind have any 
where accumulated, and who is using these to 
add to the stock. So is it with Denon, Beckford, 
Belzoni, Wilkinson, Layard, Kane, Lepsius, and 
Livingston. " The rich man," says Saadi, " is 
everywhere expected and at home." The rich take 
up something more of the world into man's life. 
They include the country as well as the town, the 
ocean-side, the White Hills, the Far West, and the 
old European homesteads of man, in their notion 
of available material. The world is his, who has 
money to go over it. He arrives at the sea-shore, 
and a sumptuous ship has floored and carpeted for 
him the stormy Atlantic, and made it a luxurious 
hotel, amid the horrors of tempest?. The Persians 
say, " 'Tis the same to him who wears a shoe, as if 
the whole earth were covered with leather." 

Kings are said to have long arms, but every man 
should have long arms, and should pluck his living, 
his instruments, his power, and his knowing, from 
the sun, moon, and stars. Is not then the demand 
to be rich legitimate ? Yet, I have never seen a 
rich man. I have never seen a man as rich as all 
men ought to be, or, with an adequate command of 
nature. The pulpit and the press have many com- 
monplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth ; but 
if men should take these moralists at their word, 
and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would 
rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in 



WEALTH, 8S 

tlie people, lest civilization should be undone. Men 
are urged by tlieir ideas to acquire the command 
over nature. Ages derive a culture from the 
wealth of Roman CiBsars, Leo Tenths, magnificent 
Kings of France, Grand Dukes of Tuscany, Dukes 
of Devonshire, Townleys, Vernons, and Peels, in 
England ; or whatever great proprietors. It is the 
interest of all men, that there should be Vaticans 
and Louvres full of noble works of art ; British 
Museums, and French Gardens of Plants, Phila- 
delphia Academies of Natural History, Bodleian, 
Ambrosian, Royal, Congressional Libraries. It is 
the interest of all that there should be Explor- 
ing Expeditions ; Captain Cooks to voyage round 
the world, Rosses, Franklins, Richardsons, and 
Kanes, to find the magnetic and the geographic 
poles. We are all richer for the measurement of 
a deo;ree of latitude on the earth's surface. Our 
navigation is safer for the chart. How intimately 
our knowledge of the system of the Universe 
rests on that ! — and a true economy in a state 
or an individual will forget its frugality in behalf 
of claims like these. 

Whilst it is each man's interest, that, not only 
ease and convenience of living, but also weakh or 
suq^lus product should exist somewhere, it need 
not be in his hands. Often it is very undesirable 
to him. Goethe said well, " nobody should be 
rich but those who understand it." Some men 



84 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

are bom to own, and can animate all their posses- 
sions. Others cannot : their ownino; is not arace- 
fill ; seems to be a compromise of their chai-acter : 
they seem to steal their own dividends. They 
should own wdio can administer ; not they who 
hoard and conceal ; not they who, the greater pro- 
prietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but 
they whose work carves out work for more, opens 
a path for all. For he is the rich man in whom the 
people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom 
the people are poor : and liow to give all access to 
the masterpieces of art and nature, is the problem 
of civilization. The socialism of our day has done 
good service in setting men on thinking how certain 
civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, 
can be enjoyed by all. For example, the providing 
to each man the means and apparatus of science, 
and of the arts. There are many articles good for 
occasional use, which few men are able to own. 
Every man wishes to see the ring of Saturn, the 
satellites and belts of Jupiter and Mars ; the moun- 
tains and craters in the moon : yet how few can 
buy a telescope ! and of those, scarcely one would 
like the trouble of keeping it in order, and exhibit- 
ing it. So of electrical and chemical apparatus, and 
many the like things. Every man may have occa- 
sion to consult books which he does not care to 
possess, such as cyclopcTdias, dictionaries, tables, 
charts, maps, and public documents ; pictures also 



WEALTH. 85 

of birds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, flowers, whose, 
names he desires to know. 

There is a refining influence from the arts of 
Design on a prepared mind, which is as positive as 
that of music, and not to be supplied from any- 
other source. But pictures, engravings, statues, and 
casts, beside their first cost, entail expenses, as of 
galleries and keepers for the exhibition ; and the 
use which any man can make of them is rare, and 
their value, too, is much enhanced by the numbers 
of men who can share their enjoyment. In the 
Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any 
person should pretend a property in a work of art, 
which belonged to all who could behold it. I think 
sometimes, — could I only have music on my own 
terms ; — could I live in a great city, and know 
where 1 could go whenever I wished the ablution 
and inundation of musical waves, — that were a 
bath and a medicine. 

If properties of this kind w^ere owned by states, 
towns, and lyceums, they would draw the bonds 
of neighborhood closer. A town would exist to an 
intellectual purpose. In Europe, where the feudal 
forms secure the permanence of wealth in certain 
families, those families buy and preserve these 
things, and lay them open to the public. But in 
America, where democratic institutions divide every 
estate into small portions, after a few years, the 
public should step into the place of these proprie* 



86 CONDI CT OF LIFE. 

tors, and provide this culture and inspiration for the 
citizen. 

Man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows 
rich by the use of his faculties ; by the union of 
thought with nature. Property is an intellectual 
production. The game requires coolness, right 
reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. 
Cultivated labor drives out brute labor. An infi- 
nite number of shrewd men, in infinite years, have 
arrived at certain best and shortest ways of doing, 
and this accumulated skill in arts, cultures, harvest- 
ings, curings, manufactures, navigations, exchanges, 
constitutes the worth of our world to-day. 

Commerce is a game of skill, which every man 
cannot play, which few men can play well. The 
right merchant is one who has the just average of 
faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong 
affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what 
he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the 
truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in 
the .man, for his good or bad fortune, and so, in 
making money. Men talk as if there were some 
mrgic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts 
of life. He knows, that all goes on the old road, 
pound for pound, cent for cent, — for every effect a 
perfect cause, — and that good luck is another name 
for tenacity of purpose. He insures himself in every 
transaction, and likes small and sure gains. Probity 
and closeness to the facts are the basis, but the mas- 



WEALTH. 87 

ters of the art add a certain long arithmetic. The 
problem is, to combine many and remote opera- 
tions, with the accuracy and adherence to the facts, 
which is easy in near and small transactions ; so to 
arrive at gigantic results, without any compromise 
of safety. Napoleon was fond of telling the story 
of the Marseilles banker, wdio said to his visitor, 
surprised at the contrast between the splendor 
of the banker's chateau and hospitality, and the 
meanness of the counting-room in which he had 
seen him, — " Young man, you are too young to 
understand how masses are formed, — the true and 
only power, — wdiether composed of money, water, 
or men, it is all alike, — a mass is an immense 
centre of motion, but it must be begun, it must be 
kept up ; " — and he might have added, that the 
Avay in wdiich it must be begun and kept up, is, 
by obedience to the law of particles. 

Success consists in close appliance to the laws of 
the world, and, since those laws are intellectual and 
moral, an intellectual and moral obedience. Polit- 
ical Economy is as good a book wherein to read 
the life of man, and the ascendency of laws over all 
private and hostile influences, • as any Bible which 
has come down to us. 

Money is representative, and follows the nature 
and fortunes of the owner. The coin is a delicate 
meter of civil, social, and moral changes. The 
farmer is covetous of his dollar, and wdth reason. 



58 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

It is no waif to him. He knows how many strokes 
of labor it represents. His bones ache with the 
clay's work that earned it. He knows how much 
land it represents ; — how much rain, frost, and 
sunshine. He knows that, in the dollar, he gives 
you so much discretion and patience, so much hoe- 
ing, and threshing. Try to lift his dollar ; you 
must lift all that weight. In the city, where money 
follows the skit of a pen, or a lucky rise in ex- 
change, it comes to be looked on as light. I wish 
the farmer held it dearer, and would spend it only 
for real bread ; force for force. 

The farmer's dollar is heavy, and the clerk's is 
light and nimble ; leaps out of his pocket ; jumps 
on to cards and faro-tables : but still more curious 
is its susceptibility to metaphysical changes. It is 
the finest barometer of social storms, and announces 
revolutions. 

Every step of civil advancement makes every 
man's dollar worth more. In California, the coun- 
try where it grew, — what would it buy ? A few 
years since, it would buy a shanty, dysentery, hun- 
ger, bad company, and crime. There are wide 
countries, like Siberia, where it would buy little 
else to-day, than some petty mitigation of suffering. 
In Rome, it will buy beauty and magnificence. 
Forty years ago, a dollar would not buy much in 
Boston. Now it will buy a great deal more in our 
old town, thanks to railroads, telegraphs, steamers. 



WEALTH. 89 

and the contemporaneous growth of New York, and 
the whole country. Yet there are many goods ap- 
pertaining to a capital city, which are not yet pur- 
chasable here, no, not with a mountain of dollars. 
A dollar in Florida is not worth a dollar in Massa- 
chusetts. A dollar is not value, but representative 
of value, and, at last, of moral values. A dollar is 
rated for the corn it will buy, or to speak strictly, 
not for the corn or house-room, but for Athenian 
corn, and Roman house-room, — for the wit, probity, 
and power, which we eat bread and dwell in houses 
to share and exert. Wealth is mental ; wealth is 
moral. The value of a dollar is, to buy just things : 
a dollar goes on increasing in value with all the 
genius, and all the virtue of the world. A dollar 
in a university, is worth more than a dollar in a 
jail ; in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding com- 
munity, than in some sink of crrnie, where dice, 
knives, and arsenic, are in constant play. 

The " Bank-Note Detector " is a useful publica- 
tion. But the ciuTcnt dollar, silver or paper, is 
itself the detector of the right and wTong where it 
circulates. Is it not instantly enhanced by the in- 
crease of equity ? If a trader refuses to sell his 
vote, or adheres to some odious right, he makes so 
much more equity in Massachusetts; and every acre 
in the State is more worth, in the hour of his action. 
If you take out of State-street the ten honestest 
merchants, and put in ten roguish persons, con- 



90 CONDUCT OF LIFK. 

trolling the same amount of ca})ital, — the rates of 
insurance will indicate it; the soundness of banks 
will show it : the highways will be less secure : 
the schools will feel it ; the children will bring 
home tlieir little dose of the poison: the judge will 
sit less firmly on the bench, and his decisions be 
less upright ; he has lost so much support and 
constraint, — which all need; and the pulpit will 
betray it, in a laxer rule of life. An apple-tree, 
if you take out every day for a number of days, a 
load of loam, and put in a load of sand about its 
roots, — will find it out. An apple-tree is a stupid 
kind of creature, but if this treatment be pursued 
for a short time, I think it would begin to mistrust 
something. And if you should take out of the 
powerful class engaged in trade a hundred good 
men, and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just the 
same thing, introduce a demoralizing institution, 
would not the dollar, which is not much stuj^ider 
than an apple-tree, presently find it out ? The 
value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society. 
Every man who removes into this city, with any 
purchasable talent or skill in him, gives to every 
man's labor in the city, a new worth. If a talent is 
anywhere born into the world, the community of 
nations is enriched ; and, much more, with a new 
degree of probity. The expense of crime, one 
of the principal charges of every nation, is so far 
stopped. In Europe, crime is observed to increase 



WEALTxH 91 

or abate with tlie price of bread. If tlie Roths- 
childs at Paris do not accept bills, the people at 
Manchester, at Paisley, at Binningham, are forced 
into the highway, and landlords are shot down in 
Ireland. The police records attest it. The \dbra- 
tions are presently felt in New York, New Orleans, 
and Chicago. Not much otherwise, the econom- 
ical power touches the masses through the political 
lords. Rothschild refuses the Russian loan, and 
there is peace, and the harvests are saved. He 
takes it, and there is war, and an agitation through 
a large portion of mankind, with eveiy hideous 
result, ending in revolution, and a new order. 

Wealth brings with it its own checks and bal- 
ances. The basis of political economy is non- 
interference. The only safe rule is found in the 
self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do 
not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews 
with your sumptuary laws. Give no bounties : 
make equal laws : secure life and property, and 
you need not give alms. Open the doors of oppor- 
tunity to talent and virtue, and they wdll do them- 
selves justice, and property will not be in bad hands. 
In a free and just commonwealth, property rushes 
ii'om the idle and imbecile, to the industrious, brave, 
and persevering. 

The laws of natm'e play through trade, as a toy- 
battery exhibits the effects of electricity. The level 
of the sea is not more surely kept, than is the 



yZ CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

equilibrium of value in society, by the demand and 
supply : and artifice or legislation punishes itself, 
by reactions, gluts, and bankruptcies. The sublime 
laws play indifferently through atoms and galaiiies. 
Whoever knows what happens in the getting and 
spending of a loaf of bread and a pint of beer ; that 
no wishing will change the rigorous limits of pints 
and penny loaves ; that, for all that is consumed, so 
much less remains in the basket and pot ; but what 
is gone out of these is not wasted, but well spent, 
if it nourish his body, and enable him to finish his 
task ; — knows all of political economy that the 
budgets of empires can teach him. The interest of 
petty economy is this symbolization of the great 
economy ; the way in which a house, and a private 
man's methods, tally with the solar system, and the 
laws of give and take, throughout nature ; and, 
however wary we are of the falsehoods and petty 
tricks which we suicidally play off on each other, 
every man has a certain satisfaction, whenever his 
dealing touches on the inevitable facts ; when he 
sees that tilings themselves dictate the price, as they 
always tend to do, and, in large manufactures, are 
seen to do. Your paper is not fine or coarse 
enough, — is too heaw, or too thin. The manu- 
facturer says, he will furnish you with just that 
thickness or thinness you want ; the pattern is quite 
indifferent to him ; here is his schedule ; — any 
variety of paper, as cheaper or dearer, Avith the 



WEALTH. 93 

prices annexed. A pound of paper costs so much, 
and you may have it made up in any pattern you 
flmcy. 

There is in all our dealino-s a self-reo[;ulation that 
supersedes cliafFering. You will rent a house, but 
must liaA'e it cheap. The owner can reduce the 
rent, but so he incapacitates himself from making 
proper repairs, and the tenant gets not the house he 
w^ould have, but a worse one ; besides, that a rela- 
tion a little injurious is established between land- 
lord and tenant. You dismiss your laborer, saying, 
" Patrii^k, I shall send for you as soon as I cannot 
do without you." Patrick goes off contented, for 
he knows that the weeds will grow with the pota- 
toes, the vines must be planted, next week, and, 
however unwilling you may be, the cantelopes, 
crook-necks, and cucumbers will send for him. Who 
but must wish that all labor and value should stand 
on the same simple and surly market ? If it is the 
best of its kind, it will. We must have joiner, 
locksmith, planter, priest, poet, doctor, cook, weav- 
er, ostler ; each in turn, through the year. 

If a St. Michael's pear sells for a shilling, it costs 
a shilling to raise it. If, in Boston, the best securi- 
ties offer twelve j^^r cent, for money, they have just 
six per cent, of insecurity. You may not see that the 
fine pear costs you a shilling, but it costs the commu- 
nity so much. The shilling represents the number 
of enemies the pear has, and the amount of risk in 



94 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

ripening it. The price of coal shows the narrow- 
ness of the coal-field, and a compulsory confinement 
of the miners to a certain district. All salaries 
are reckoned on contingent, as well as on actual 
services. " If the wind were always southwest by 
west," said the skipper, " women might take ships 
to sea." One might say, that all things are of one 
price ; that nothing is cheap or dear ; and that the 
apparent disparities that strike us, are only a shop- 
man's trick of concealing the damage in your bar- 
gain. A youth coming into the city from his 
native New Hampshire farm, with its hard fare still 
fresh in his remembrance, boards at a first-class 
hotel, and believes he must somehow have out- 
witted Dr. Franklin and Mai thus, for luxuries are 
cheap. But he pays for the one convenience of a 
better dinner, by the loss of some of the richest 
social and educational advantages. He has lost 
what guards ! what incentives ! He will perhaps 
find by and by, that he left the Muses at the door 
of the hotel, and found the Furies inside. Monej 
often costs too much, and power and pleasure arc 
not cheap. The ancient poet said, " the gods sell 
all things at a fair price." 

There is an example of the compensations in 
the commercial history of this country. When the 
European wars threw the carrying-trade of the 
world, from 1800 to 1812, into American bottoms, 
a seizure was now and then made of an American 



WEALTH. 95 

ship. Of course, the loss was serious to the owner, 
but the country was indemniiiecl ; for we charged 
threepence a pound for carrying cotton, sixpence 
for tobacco, and so on ; which paid for the risk and 
loss, and brought into the country an immense pros- 
perity, early marriages, private wealth, the building 
of cities, and of states : and, after the war was over, 
we received compensation over and above, by treaty, 
for all the seizures. Well, the Americans grew rich 
and great. But the pay-day comes round. Brit- 
ain, France, and Germany, which our extraordinary 
profits had impoverished, send out, attracted by the 
fiime of our advantages, first their thousands, then 
their millions, of poor people, to share the crop. 
At first, we employ them, and increase our pros- 
perity : but, in the artificial system of society and 
of protected labor, which we also have adopted and 
enlarged, there come presently checks and stop- 
pages. Then we refuse to employ these poor men. 
But they will not so be answered. They go into 
the poor rates, and, though we refuse wages, we 
must now pay the same amount in the form of 
taxes. Again, it turns out that the largest propor- 
tion of crimes are committed by foreigners. The 
2ost of the crime, and the expense of courts, and 
of prisons, w^e must bear, and the standing army 
of preventive police we must pay. The cost of 
education of the posterity of this great colony, 1 
will not compute. But the gross amount of these 



96 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

costs will begin to pay back what we thought was 
a net gain from our transatlantic customers of 1800. 
It is vain to refuse this payment. We cannot get 
rid of these people, and we cannot get rid of their 
will to be supported. That has become an inevita- 
ble element of our politics ; and, for their votes, 
each of the dominant parties courts and assists them 
to get it executed. JMoreover, we have to pay, 
not what would have contented them at home, 
but what they have learned to think necessary 
here ; so that opinion, fancy, and all manner of 
moral considerations complicate the problem. 

There are a few measures of economy which will 
bear to be named without disgust ; for the subject 
is tender, and we may easily have too much of it ; 
and therein resembles the hideous animalcules of 
which our bodies are built up, — which, offensive in 
the particular, yet compose valuable and effective 
masses. Our nature and genius force us to respect 
ends, whilst we use means. We must use the 
means, and yet, in our most accurate using, some- 
how screen and cloak them, as we can only give 
them any beauty, by a reflection of the glory of the 
end. That is the good head, which serves the end, 
and commands the means. The rabble are cor- 
rupted by their means ; the means are too strong for 
them, and they desert their end. 

1. The first of these measures is that each man's 



WEALTH. 97 

expense must proceed from his cliaiucter. As long 
as joiir genius buys, the investment is safe, though 
you spend hke a monarch. Nature arms each man 
with some faculty which enables him to do easily 
some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes 
him necessary to society. This native determina- 
tion guides his labor and his spending. He wants 
an equipment of means and tools proper to his tal- 
ent. And to save on this point, were to neutralize 
the special strength and helpfulness of each mind. 
Do your work, respecting the excellence of the 
work, and not its acceptableness. This is so much 
economy, that, rightly read, it is the sum of econ- 
omy. Profligacy consists not in spending years of 
time or chests of money, — but in spending them 
off the line of yoiu' career. The crime which bank- 
rupts men and states, is, job-work ; — declining from 
your main design, to serve a turn here or there. 
Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of 
your life : nothing is great or desirable, if it is off 
from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a 
straight line, and say, that society can never pros- 
per, but must always be bankrupt, until every man 
does that Avliich he was created to do. 

Spend for your expense, and retrench the expense 
which is not yours. Allston, the painter, was wont 
to say, that he built a plain house, and filled it with 
plain furniture, because he would hold out no bribe 
to any to visit him, who had not similar tastes to 



98 CONDUCT OF LIFr. 

his own. We are s^onpathetic, and, like cliildren, 
want everytlnno; we see. But it is a larire stride to 
independence, — wlien a man, in tlie discoveiy of 
his proper talent, lias sunk the necessity for false 
expenses. As the betrothed maiden, by one secm'e 
affection, is relieved from a s^'stem of slaveries, — 
tli(3 daily inculcated necessity of pleasing all, — so 
the man who has found what he can do, can spend 
on that, and leave all other spending. Montaigne 
said, " When he was a younger brother, he went 
brave in dress and equipage, but afterward his 
chateau and farms might answer for him." Let 
a man who belongs to the class of nobles, those, 
namely, who have found out that they can do 
something, relieve himself of all vague squandering 
on objects not his. Let the realist not mind a[>- 
pearances. Let him delegate to others the costly 
courtesies and decorations of social life. The vir- 
tues are economists, but some of the vices are also. 
Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride 
is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I 
reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hun- 
dred a yeax'. Pride is handsome, economical . 
pride eradicates so many vices, letting none sub- 
sist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great 
gain to exchange vanity for pride. Pride can go 
without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in 
a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, 
beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel 



WEALTH. 99 

afoot, can talk T\'ith poor men, or sit silent well- 
contented in fine saloons. But vanity costs money, 
labor, horses, men, women, health, and peace, and 
is still nothing at last, a long way leading nowhere. 
— Only one drawback ; proud people are intolera- 
bly selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving. 

Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a 
genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or 
philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill pro- 
vider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter 
himself with duties which will embitter his days, 
and spoil him for his proper work. We had in this 
region, twenty years ago, among our educated men, 
a sort of Arcadian fanaticism, a passionate desire to 
go upon the land, and unite farming to intellec- 
tual pursuits. Many effected their purpose, and 
made the experiment, and some became downright 
ploughmen ; but all were cured of their faith that 
scholarship and practical farming, (I mean, with 
one's own hands,) could be united. 

With brow bent, with firm intent, the pale 
scholar leaves his desk to draw a freer breath, and 
get a juster statement of his thought, in the garden- 
walk. He stoops to pull up a purslain, or a dock, 
that is choking the young corn, and finds there 
are two : close behind the last, is a third ; he 
reaches out his hand to a fourth ; behind that, are 
four thousand and one. He is heated and untuned, 
and, by and by, wakes up from his idiot dream of 



100 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

chickweed and red-root, to remember his morning 
thouglit, and to find, that, witli his adamantine pur- 
poses, he has been duped by a dandehon. A garden 
is hke those pernicious machineries we read of, every 
month, in the newspapers, Avhich catch a man's coat- 
skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and 
his whole body to irresistible destruction. In an 
evil hour he pulled down his wall, and added a 
field to his homestead. No land is bad, but land is 
worse. If a man owai land, the land owns him. 
Now let him leave home, if he dare. Every tree 
and graft, every hill of melons, row of corn, or 
quickset hedge, all he has done, and all he means 
to do, stand in his way, like duns, when he would 
go out of his gate. The devotion to these vines 
and trees he finds poisonous. Long free walks, a 
circuit of miles, free his brain, and serve his body. 
Long marches are no hardship to him. He believes 
he composes easily on the hills. But this pottering 
in a few square yards of garden is dispiriting and 
drivelling. The smell of the plants has drugged 
him, and robbed him of energy. He finds a cata- 
lepsy in his bones. He grows peevish and poor- 
opirited. The genius of reading and of gardening 
are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous elec- 
tricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks : 
the other is diffiise strength ; so that each disquali- 
fies its workman for the other's duties. 

An engraver whose hands must be of an exquisite 



WEALTH. 101 

delicacy of stroke, should not lay stone walls. Sir 
David BrcAvster gives exact instructions for micro- 
scopic observation : — '' Lie dow^n on your back, and 
hold the single lens and object over your eye," &c. 
&c. How much more the seeker of abstract truth, 
who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentra^- 
tion, and almost a going out of the body to think ! 

2. Spend after your genius, and by system. Na- 
ture goes by rule, not by sallies and saltations. 
There must be system in the economies. Saving 
and unexpensiveness wall not keep the most pa- 
thetic family from imin, nor wall bigger incomes 
make free spending safe. The secret of success lies 
never in the amount of money, but in the relation 
of income to outgo ; as if, after expense has been 
fixed at a certain point, then new and steady rills 
of income, though never so small, being added, 
wealth begins. But in ordinary, as means increase, 
spending increases faster, so that, large incomes, in 
England and elsewhere, are found not to help mat- 
ters ; — the eating quality of debt does not relax its 
voracity. Wh(m the cholera is in the potato, wdiat 
is the use of planting larger crops ? In England, 
the richest country in the universe, I w^as assured 
by shrewd observers, that great lords and ladies 
had no more guineas to give away than other peo- 
ple ; that liberahty with money is as rare, and as 
immediately famous a virtue as it is here. Want is 
a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never 



102 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

large enough to cover. I remember in Warwicik- 
shire, to have been shown a fair manoi", still in the 
same name as in Shakspeare's time. The rent-roll, 
I was told, is some fourteen thousand pounds a year : 
but, when the second son of the late proprietor was 
born, the father was perplexed how to provide for 
him. The eldest son must inherit the manor ; what 
to do with this supernumerary ? He was advised to 
breed him for the Church, and to settle him in the 
rectorship, which was in the gift of the family ; 
which was done. It is a general rule in that coun- 
try, that bigger incomes do not help anybody. It 
is commonly observed, that a sudden wealth, like a 
prize drawn in a lottery, or a large bequest to a 
poor family, does not permanently enrich. They 
have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and, with 
the rapid wealth, come rapid claims : which they do 
not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly 
dissipated. 

A system must be in every economy, or the best 
single expedients are of no avail. A farm is a 
good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, 
and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out. 
Thus, the cattle are a main link in the chain-ring. 
If the non-conformist or aesthetic farmer leaves out 
the cattle, and does not also leave out the want 
which the cattle must supply, he must fill the gap 
by begging or stealing. When men now alive were 
born, the farm yielded everything that was con- 



WEALTH. 103 

sumed on it. The farm jaelded no money, and the 
farmer got on without. If he fell sick, his neigh- 
bors came in to his aid : each gave a day's work ; 
or a half day ; or lent his yoke of oxen, or his 
horse, and kept his Avork even : hoed his potatoes, 
mowed his hay, reaped his rye ; well knowing that 
no man could afford to hire labor, without selling 
his land. In autumn, a farmer could sell an ox or 
a hog, and get a little money to pay taxes withal. 
Now, the farmer buys almost all he consumes, — 
tin-ware, cloth, sugar, tea, coffee, fish, coal, railroad- 
tickets, and newspapers. 

A master in each art is required, because the 
practice is never with still or dead subjects, but 
they change in your hands. You think farm-build- 
ings and broad acres a solid property : but its value 
is flowing like water. It requires as much watch- 
ing as if you were decanting wine from a cask. 
The farmer knows what to do with it, stops every 
leak, turns all the streamlets to one reservoir, and 
decants wine : but a blunderhead comes out of 
Cornhill, tries his hand, and it all leaks away. So 
is it with granite streets, or timber townships, as 
with fruit or flowers. Nor is any investment so 
pBrmanent, that it can be allowed to remain with- 
out incessant watching, as the history of each 
attempt to lock up an inheritance through two 
generations for an unborn inheritor may show. 

When jMr. Cockajnie takes a cottage in the coun- 



104 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

try, and vdll keep his cow, he thinks a cow is a 
creature that is fed on hay, and gives a pail of milk 
twice a day. But the cow that he buys gives milk 
ibr three months ; then her bag dries up. What to 
do with a dry cow ? who will buy her ? Perhaps 
liG bought also a yoke of oxen to do his work ; but 
they get blown and lame. What to do with blown 
and lame oxen ? The farmer fats his, after the 
spring-work is done, and kills them in the fall. 
But how can Cockayne, who has no pastures, and 
leaves his cottage daily in the cars, at business 
hours, be pothered with fatting and killing oxen ? 
He plants trees ; but there must be crops, to keep 
the trees in ploughed land. What shall be the 
crops ? He will have nothing to do with trees, but 
will have grass. After a year or two, the grass 
must be turned up and ploughed : now Avhat crops ? 
Credulous Cockayne ! 

3. Help comes in the custom of the country, 
and the rule of Lnpera imrendo. The inile is not to 
dictate, nor to insist on carrying out each of your 
schemes by ignorant wilfulness, but to learn prac- 
tically the secret spoken from all nature, that things 
themselves refuse to be mismanao^ed, and will show 
to the watchful their own law. Nobody need stir 
hand or foot. The custom of the country will do 
it all. I know not how to build or to plant ; 
neither how to buy wood, nor what to do with 
the house-lot, the field, or the wood-lot, when 



WEALTH. 105 

bou^lit. Never fear : it is all settled how it shall 
be, long beforehand, in the custom of the country, 
whether to sand, or whether to clay it, when to 
plough, and how to dress, wdiether to grass, or to 
corn ; and you cannot help or hinder it. Natiu'e 
has her own best mode of doing each thing, and 
she has somewhere told it plainly, if w^e will keep 
our eyes and ears open. If not, she will not be 
slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our own 
way to hers. How often we must remember the 
art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken 
bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from 
false position ; they fly into place by the action of 
the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts 
rely. 

Of the two eminent engineers in the recent con- 
struction of railways in England, Mr. Bininel went 
straight from terminus to terminus, through moun- 
tains, over streams, crossing highways, cutting ducal 
estates in two, and shooting through this man's cel- 
lar, and that man's attic window, and so arriving at 
his end, at great pleasui'e to geometers, but with 
cost to his company. Mr. Stephenson, on the 
contraiy, believing that the river knows the way, 
follow^ed his valley, as implicitly as our Western 
Railroad follows the Westfield River, and turned 
out to be the safest and cheapest engineer. We say 
the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse 
surveyors. Every pedestrian in our pastures has 

5* 



106 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

frequent occasion to thank the cows for cutting the 
best path through the thicket, and over the hills : 
and travellers and Indians know the value of a 
buffalo-trail, which is sure to be the easiest possible 
pass through the ridge. 

When a citizen, fresh from Dock-square, or Milk- 
street, comes out and buys land in the countiy, his 
first thought is to a fine outlook from his windows : 
his library must command a western view : a sun- 
set every day, bathing the shoulder of Blue Hills, 
Wachusett, and the peaks of Monadnoc and Unca- 
noonuc. What, thirty acres, and all this magnifi- 
cence for fifteen hundred dollars ! It would be 
cheap at fifty thousand. He proceeds at once, his 
eyes dim with tears of joy, to fix the spot for his 
corner-stone. But the man who is to level the 
ground, thinks it will take many hundred loads of 
gravel to fill the hollow to the road. The stone- 
mason who should build the well thinks he shall 
have to dig forty feet : the baker doubts he shall 
never like to drive up to the door : the practical 
neighbor cavils at the position of the bam ; and 
the citizen comes to know that his predecessor the 
farmer built the house in the right spot for the 
sun and wind, the spring, and water-drainage, and 
the convenience to the pasture, the garden, the 
field, and the road. So Dock-square yields the 
point, and things have their own way. Use has 
made the farmer wise, and the foolish citizen learns 



WEALTH. 107 

to take his counsel. From step to step he comes at 
last to surrender at discretion. The farmer affects 
to take his orders ; but the citizen says, You may 
ask me as often as you will, and in what ingenious 
forms, for an opinion concerning the mode of build- 
ing my wall, or sinking my well, or laying out my 
acre, but the ball will rebound to you. These are 
matters on which I neither know, nor need to know 
anything. These are questions which you and not 
I shall answer. 

Not less, within doors, a system settles itself para- 
mount and tyrannical over master and mistress, 
servant and child, cousin and acquaintance. 'Tis 
in vain that genius or virtue or energy of character 
strive and cry against it. This is fate. And 'tis 
very well that the poor husband reads in a book 
of a new way of living, and resolves to adopt it at 
home : let him go home and try it, if he dare. 

4. Another point of economy is to look for 
seed of the same kind as you sow : and not to hope 
to buy one Idnd with another kind. Friendship 
buys friendship ; justice, justice ; military merit, 
mihtary success. Good husbandry finds wife, chil- 
dren, and household. The good merchant large 
gains, ships, stocks, and money. The good poet 
fame, and literary credit ; but not either, the ctiier. 
Yet there is commonly a confusion of expectations 
on these points. Hotspur lives for the moment ; 
Draises himself for it ; and despises Furlong, that be 



108 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

does not. Hotspur, of course, is poor ; and Furlong 
a good provider. The odd circumstance is, that 
Hotspur thinks it a superiority in himself, this 
improvidence, Avhich ought to be rewarded with 
Furlono:'s lands. 

I have not at all completed my design. But we 
must not leave the topic, without casting one glance 
into the interior recesses. It is a doctrine of phi- 
losophy, that man is a being of degrees ; that there 
is nothing in ths w^orld, which is not repeated in 
his body ; his body being a sort of miniature or 
summary of the world ; then that there is nothing 
in his body, which is not repeated as in a celestial 
sphere in his mind : then, there is nothing in his 
brain, which is not repeated in a higher sphere, in 
his moral system. 

5. Now these thino;s are so in Nature. All 
things ascend, and the royal rule of economy is, 
that it should ascend also, or, whatever we do must 
always have a higher aim. Thus it is a maxim, 
that money is another kind of blood. Pecunia alter 
sanguis : or, the estate of a man is only a larger 
kind of body, and admits of regimen analogous to 
his l)odily circulations. So there is no maxim of 
the merchant, e. g.^ " Best use of money is to pay 
debts ; " " Every business by itself; " " Best time 
is present time ; " " The right investment is in tools 
of your trade ; " or tlie like, which does not admit 
of an extended sense. The countincr-room maxims 



WEALTH. 10^ 

liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The 
merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's 
economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for 
pleasure. It is to invest income ; that is to say, to 
take up particulars into generals ; days into inte- 
gral eras, — literary, emotive, practical, of its life, 
and still to ascend in its investment. The mer- 
chant has but one rule, absorb and invest : he is 
to be capitalist : the scraps and filings must be 
gathered back into the crucible ; the gas and smoke 
must be burned, and earnings must not go to in- 
crease expense, but to capital again. Well, the 
man must be capitalist. "Will he spend his income, 
or will he invest ? His body and every organ is 
under the same law. His body is a jar, in which 
the liquor of life is stored. Will he spend for pleas- 
ure ? The w^ay to ruin is short and facile. Will 
he not spend, but hoard for power ? It passes 
through the sacred fermentations, by that law of 
Nature whereby everything climbs to higher plat- 
forms, and bodily vigor becomes mental and moral 
vicTor. The bread he eats is first streno-th and 
animal spirits : it becomes, in higher laboratories, 
imagery and thought ; and in still higher results, 
courage and endurance. This is the right com- 
pound interest ; this is capital doubled, quadrupled, 
centupled ; man raised to his highest power. 

The true thrift is always to spend on the higher 
plane ; to invest and invest, w^ith keener avarice, 



110 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in 
auo-mentino; animal existence. Nor is the man en- 
riched, in repeating the old experiments of animal 
sensation, nor unless through new powers and as- 
cending pleasures, he knows himself by the actual 
experience of higher good, to be already on the 
4ray to the highest. 



IV. 
CULTURR 



Can rules or tutors educate 
The semigod whom we await? 
He must be musical, 
Tremulous, impressional, 
Alive to gentle influence 
Of landscape and of sky, 
And tender to the spirit-touch 
Of man's or maiden's eye : 
But, to his native centre fast, 
Shall into Future fuse the Past, 
And the world's flomng fates in his own mould 
recast. 



CULTURE. 

The word of ambition at the present clay is Cul- 
ture. Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, 
and of wealth as a means of j^ower, culture corrects 
the theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his 
power. A topical memory makes him an almanac ; 
a talent for debate, a disputant ; skill to get money 
makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture re- 
duces these inflammations by invoking the aid of 
other powers against the dominant talent, and by 
appealing to the rank of powers. It watches suc- 
cess. For performance, Nature has no mercy, and 
sacrifices the perforaier to get it done ; makes a 
dropsy or a tympany of him. If she wants a 
thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, 
and any excess of power in one part is usually paid 
for at once by some defect in a contiguous part. 

Our efficiency depends so much on our concen- 
tration, that Nature usually in the instances where 
a marked man Is sent Into the world, overloads him 
with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working 
power. It is said, no man can write but one book ; 
and if a man have a defect, it Is apt to leave its im- 



114 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

pression on all his performances. If she creates a 
policeman like Fouche, he is made up of suspicions 
and of plots to circumvent them. " The air," saici 
Fouche, " is full of poniards." The physician 
Sanctorius spent his life in a pair of scales, weign- 
ing his food. Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, 
because the Canon Yeman's Tale illustrates the 
statute Hen. V, Chap. 4, against alchemy. I saw 
a man who believed the principal mischiefs in the 
English state were derived from the devotion to 
musical concerts. A freemason, not long since, set 
out to explain to this country, that the principal 
cause of the success of General Washington, was, 
the aid he derived from the freemasons. 

But worse than the harping on one string, Ivat^u'e 
has secured individualism, by giving the privato 
person a high conceit of his weight in the system. 
The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and 
bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 
'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all consti- 
tutions. In the distemper known to physicians as 
chorea., the patient sometimes turns round, and con- 
tinues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a 
metaphysical varioloid of this malady? The man 
runs round a ring formed by his own talent, falls 
into an admiration of it, and loses relation to the 
world. It is a tendency in all minds. One of its 
annoying forms, is a craving for sympathy. The 
BufFerers parade their miseries, tear the lint from 



CULTURE. 115 

their bruises, reveal their indictable crimes, that you 
may pity them. They like sickness, because phys- 
ical pain will extort some show of interest from the 
bystanders, as we have seen children, who, finding 
themselves of no account when grown people come 
in, will cough till they choke, to draw attention. 

This distemper is the scourge of talent, — of 
artists, inventors, and philosophers. Eminent spir- 
itualists shall have an incapacity of putting their 
act or word aloof from them, and seeing it bravely 
for the nothing it is. Beware of the man who says, 
" I am on the eve of a revelation." It is speedily 
punished, inasmuch as this habit invites men to 
humor it, and by treating the patient tenderly, to 
shut him up in a narrower selfism, and exclude him 
from the great world of God's cheerful fallible men 
and women. Let us rather be insulted, whilst we 
are insultable. Religious literature has eminent 
examples, and if we run over our private list of 
poets, critics, philanthropists, and philosophers, we 
shall find them infected with this dropsy and ele- 
phantiasis, wdiich we ought to have tapped. 

This goitre of egotism is so frequent among nota- 
ble persons, that we must infer some strong neces- 
sity in nature which it subserves ; such as we see in 
the sexual attraction. The preservation of the spe- 
cies was a point of such necessity, that Nature has 
secured it at all hazards by immensely overloading 
the passion, at the risk of perpetual crime and dis- 



116 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

order. So egotism has its root in the cardinal 
necessity by which each individual persists to be 
what he is. 

This individuality is not only not inconsistent 
with culture, but is the basis of it. Every valuable 
nature is there in its own right, and the student we 
speak to must have a motherwit invincible by his 
culture, which uses all books, arts, facilities, and ele- 
gancies of intercourse, but is never subdued and lost 
in them. He only is a well-made man who has a 
good determination. And the end of culture is 
not to destroy this, God forbid ! but to train away 
all impediment and mixture, and leave nothing but 
pure power. Our student must have a style and 
determination, and be a master in his own specialty. 
But, having this, he must put it behind him. He 
must have a catholicity, a power to see with a free 
and disengaged look every object. Yet is this pri- 
vate interest and self so overcharged, that, if a man 
seeks a companion who can look at objects for their 
own sake, and without affection or self-reference, 
he will find the fewest who will give him that 
satisfaction ; whilst most men are afflicted with a 
coldness, an incuriosity, as soon as any object does 
not connect with their self-love. Though they 
talk of the object before them, they are thinking 
of themselves, and their vanity is laying little traps 
for 3^our admh'ation. 

But after a man has discovered that there are 



CULTURE. 117 

limits to the interest which his private history has 
for mankind, he still converses with his family, or a 
few companions, — perhaps with half a dozen per- 
sonalities that are famous in his neighborhood. In 
Boston, the question of life is the names of some 
eight or ten men. Have you seen Mr. Allston, 
Doctor Channing, Mr. Adams, Mr. Webster, Mr. 
Greenough ? Have you heard Everett, Garrison, 
Father Taylor, Theodore Parker ? Have you 
talked with Messieurs Turbinewheel, Summitlevel, 
and Lacofrupees ? Then you may as well die. In 
New York, the question is of some other eight, or 
ten, or twenty. Have you seen a few lawyers, mer- 
chants, and brokers, — two or three scholars, two 
or three capitalists, two or three editors of news- 
papers ? New York is a sucked orange. All con- 
versation is at an end, when we have discharo-ed 
ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or im- 
ported, which make up om- American existence. 
Nor do we expect anybody to be other than a faint 
copy of these heroes. 

Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company- 
of intelligent men together again after ten years, 
and if the presence of some penetrating and calm- 
ing genius could dispose them to frankness, what 
a confession of insanities would come up I The 
'' causes " to which we have sacrificed. Tariff or 
Democracy, Whigism or Abolition, Temperance or 
Socialism, would show like roots of bitterness and 



118 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

dragons of wrath : and our talents are as mis- 

o 

chievous as if each had been seized upon by some 
bird of prey, wliicli had whisked him away frori 
fortune, from truth, from the dear society of thvi 
poets, some zeal, some bias, and only when he was. 
now gray and nerveless, was it relaxing its claws, 
and he awaking to sober perceptions. 

Culture is the sucro-estion from certain best 
thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities, 
through which he can modulate the violence of any 
master-tones that have a droning preponderance in 
his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture 
redresses his balance, puts him among his equals 
and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympa- 
thy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and 
repulsion. 

'Tis not a compliment but a disparagement to 
consult a man only on horses, or on steam, or on 
theatres, or on eating, or on books, and, whenever 
he appears, considerately to turn the conversation 
to the bantling he is known to fondle. In the 
Norse heaven of our forefathers, Thor's house had 
five hundred and forty floors ; and man's house has 
five hundred and forty floors. His excellence is 
facility of adaptation and of transition through 
many related points, to wide contrasts and ex- 
tremes. Culture kills his exao;o;eration, his conceit 
of his village or his city. We must leave our pets 
at home, when we go into the street, and meet men 



CULTURE. 119 

on broad grounds of good meaning and good sense^ 
No performance is wortli loss of geniality. 'Tis a 
5ruel price ^ye pay for certain fancy goods called 
fine arts and pliiiosophy. In the Norse legend, All- 
fadir did not get a drink of Mimir's spring, (tlio 
fountain of wisdom,) until lie left his eye in 
pledge. And here is a pedant that cannot unfold 
his wrinkles, nor conceal his wrath at interruption 
by the best, if their conversation do not fit his im- 
pertinency, — here is he to afflict us with his per- 
sonalities. 'Tis incident to scholars, that each of 
them fancies he is pointedly odious in his comnui- 
nity. Draw him out of this limbo of irritability. 
Cleanse with healthy blood his parchment skin. 
You restore to him his eyes which he left in pledge 
at Mimir's spring. If you are the victim of your 
doing, who cares what you do ? We can spare 
your opera, your gazetteer, your chemic analysis, 
your history, your syllogisms. Your man of genius 
pays dear for his distinction. His head runs up into 
a spire, and instead of a healthy man, meny and 
wise, he is some mad dominie. Nature is reckless 
of the individual. When she has points to carry, 
sne carries them. To wade in marshes and sea- 
margins is the destiny of certain birds, and they are 
so accurately made for this, that they are imprisoned 
in those places. Each animal out of its habitat 
would starve. To the physician, each man, each 
woman, is an amplification of one organ. A sol- 



120 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

dier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could 
not exchano^e functions. And tlius we are victims 
of adaptation. 

The antidotes against this organic egotism, are, 
the range and variety of attractions, as gained by 
acquaintance with the world, with men of merit, 
with classes of society, with travel, with eminent 
persons, and with the high resources of philosophy, 
art, and religion : books, travel, society, solitude. 

The hardiest skeptic who has seen a horse broken, 
a pointer trained, or, who has visited a menagerie, 
or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not 
deny the validity of education. " A boy," says 
Plato, " is the most vicious of all wild beasts ; '* 
and, in the same spirit, the old English poet Gas- 
coigne says, " a boy is better unborn than un- 
taught." The city breeds one kind of speech and 
manners ; the back-country a different style ; the 
sea, another ; the army, a fourth. We know that 
an army which can be confided in, may be formed 
by discipline ; that, by systematic discipline all men 
may be made heroes : Marshal Lannes said to a 
French officer, " Know, Colonel, that none but a 
poltroon will boast that he never was afraid." A 
gi'eat part of courage is the courage of having done 
the thing before. And, in all human action, tJiose 
faculties will be strong which are used. Robert 
Owen said, " Give me a tiger, and I will educate 
him." 'Tis inhuman to want faith in the power 



CULTURE. 121 

of education, since to meliorate, is the law of na- 
ture ; and men are valued precisely as they exert 
onward or meliorating force. On the other hand, 
jioltroonery is the acknowledging an inferiority to 
be incurable. 

Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal dis- 
temper. There are people who can never under- 
stand a trope, or any second or expanded sense 
given to your words, or any humor ; but remain 
literalists, after hearing the music, and poetry, and 
rhetoric, and wit, of seventy or eighty years. They 
are past the help of surgeon or clergy. But even 
these can understand pitchforks and the cry of fire ! 
and I have noticed in some of this class a marked 
dislike of earthquakes. 

Let us make our education brave and preventive. 
Politics is an after-work, a poor patching. We are 
always a little late. The evil is done, the law is 
passed, and we begin the up-hill agitation for repeal 
of that of which we ought to have prevented the 
enacting. We shall one day learn to supersede 
politics by education. What we call our root-and- 
branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intem- 
perance, is only medicating the symptoms. We 
must begin higher up, namely, in Education. 

Our arts and tools mve to him who can handle 
them much the same advantage over the novice, as 
if you extended his life, ten, fifty, or a hundred 
years. And I think it the part of good sense to 



122 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

provide every fine soul with such culture, that it 
shall not, at thirty or forty years, have to say, 
' Tliis Avliich I niiglit do is made hopeless through 
my -want of weapons.' 

But it is conceded that much of our training fldls 
of eflect ; that all success is hazardous and rare ; 
that a large part of our cost and pains is thrown 
away. Nature takes the matter into her own 
hands, and, though we must not omit any jot of 
our system, we can seldom be sure that it has 
availed much, or, that as much good would not 
have accrued from a different system. 

Books, as containing the finest records of human 
wit, must always enter into our notion of culture. 
The best heads that ever existed, Pericles, Plato, 
Julius Caesar, Shakspeare, Goethe, Milton, were 
well-read, universally educated men, and quite too 
wise to undervalue letters. Their opinion has 
weight, because they had means of knowing the 
opposite opinion. We look that a great man should 
be a good reader, or, in proportion to the spon- 
taneous power should be the assimilating power. 
Good criticism is very rare, and always precious. 
I am always happy to meet persons who perceive 
the transcendent superiority of Shakspeare over all 
other writers. I like people who like Plato. Be- 
cause this love does not consist with self-conceit. 

But books are good only as far as a boy is ready 
for them. He sometimes gets ready very slowly. 



CULTURE. 123 

You send your child to the schoohuaster, but 'tis 
the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to 
the Latin class, but much of his tuition comes, on 
his way to school, from the shop-windows. You 
like the strict rules and the long terms ; and he 
finds his best leading in a by-way of his own, and 
refuses any companions but of his choosing. lie 
hates the grammar and Crradus, and loves guns, 
fishing-rods, horses, and boats. Well, the boy is 
right ; and you are not fit to direct his bringing up, 
if your theory leaves out his gymnastic training. 
Archery, cricket, gun and fishing-rod, horse and 
boat, are all educators, liberalizers ; and so are 
dancing, dress, and the street-talk ; and, — pro- 
vided only the boy has resources, and is of a noble 
and ingenuous strain, — these will not serve him less 
than the books. He learns chess, whist, dancing, 
and theatricals. The father observes that another 
boy has learned algebra and geometry in the same 
time. But the first boy has acquired much more 
than these poor games along with them. He is in- 
fatuated for weeks with whist and chess ; but pres- 
ently will find out, as you did, that when he rises 
from the game too long played, he is vacant and 
forlorn, and despises himself. Thenceforward it 
takes place with other things, and has its due 
weight in his experience. These minor skills and 
accomplishments, for example, dancing, are tickets 
of admission to the dress-circle of mankind, and the 



124 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

being master of them enables the youth to judge in- 
telligently of much, on which, otherwise, he would 
give a pedantic squint. Landor said, " I have 
suffered more from my bad dancing, than from all 
the misfortunes and miseries of my life put to- 
gether." Provided always the boy is teachable, 
(for we are not proposing to make a statue out 
of punk,) football, cricket, archery, swimming, 
skating, climbing, fencing, riding, are lessons in 
the art of power, which it is his main business to 
learn ; — riding, specially, of which Lord Herbert 
of Cherbury said, " a good rider on a good horse is 
as much above himself and others as the world can 
make him." Besides, the gun, fishing-rod, boat, 
and horse, constitute, among all who use them, se- 
cret freemasonries. They are as if they belonged 
to one club. 

There is also a negative value in these arts. 
Their chief use to the youth, is, not amusement, 
but to be known for what they are, and not to re- 
main to him occasions of heart-burn. We are full 
of superstitions. Each class fixes its eyes on the ad- 
vantages it has not ; the refined, on rude strength ; 
the democrat, on birth and breeding. One of the 
benefits of a college education is, to show the boy 
its little avail. I knew a leading man in a leading 
city, who, having set his heart on an education at 
the university, and missed it, could never quite feel 
himself the equal of his own brothers who had gone 



CULTURE. 125 

thither. His easy superiority to multitudes of pro- 
fessional men could never quite countervail to him 
this imaginary defect. Balls, riding, wine-parties, 
and bilHards, pass to a poor boy for something fine 
and romantic, which they are not ; and a free ad- 
mission to them on an equal footing, if it were pos- 
sible, only once or twice, would be worth ten times 
its cost, by undeceiving him, 

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and 
I observe that men run away to other countries, be- 
cause they are not good in their own, and run back 
to their own, because they pass for nothing in the 
new places. For the most part, only the light char- 
acters travel. Who are you that have no task to 
keep you at home ? I have been quoted as saying 
captious things about travel ; but I mean to do jus- 
tice. I think, there is a restlessness in our people, 
which aroTies want of character. All educated 

o 

Americans, first or last, go to Europe ; — perhaps, 
because it is their mental home, as the invalid habits 
of tliis country might suggest. An eminent teacher 
of girls said, " the idea of a girl's education, is, 
whatever qualifies them for going to Europe." Can 
we never extract this tape-worm of Europe from the 
brain of our countrymen ? One sees very well what 
their fate must be. He that does not fill a place at 
iiome, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide 
his insignificance in a laro;er crowd. You do not 
think you will find anything there which you have 



126 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

not seen at home ? The stuff of all countries is just 
the same. Do you suppose, there is any country 
where they do not scald milkpans, and swaddle the 
infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish ? 
What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And 
let him go where he will, he can only find so much 
beauty or worth as he carries. 

Of course, for some men, travel may be useful. 
Naturalists, discoverers, and sailors are born. Some 
men are made for couriers, exchangers, envoys, mis- 
sionaries, bearers of despatches, as others are for 
farmers and worldng-men. And if the man is of a 
L'glit and social turn, and Nature has aimed to make 
a legged and winged creature, framed for locomo- 
tion, we must follow her hint, and fin'nish him 
with that breeding which gives currency, as sedu- 
lously as with that which gives worth. But let us 
not be pedantic, but allow to travel its full effect. 
The boy grown up on the farm, which he has never 
left, is said in the country to have had no cJiance, 
and boys and men of that condition look upon work 
on a railroad, or drudgery in a city, as opportunity. 
Poor country boys of Vermont and Connecticut 
formerly owed what knowledge they had, to their 
peddliug trips to the Southern States. California 
and the Pacific Coast is now the university of this 
class, as Virginia was in old times. ' To have S077ie 
chance ' is their word. And the phrase ' to know 
die world,' or to travel, is synonymous with all 



CULTURE. 127 

men's ideas of advantage and superiority. No 
doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages 
As many languages as lie lias, as many friends, as 
many arts and trades, so many times is lie a man. 
A foreign country is a point of comparison, wliere- 
from to judge his own. One use of travel, is, to 
recommend tlie books and works of home ; [we go 
to Europe to be Americanized ;] and another, to 
find men. For, as Nature has put fruits apart in 
latitudes, a new fruit in every degree, so knowledge 
and fine moral quality she lodges in distant men. 
And thus, of the six or seven teachers whom each 
man wants among his contemporaries, it often hap- 
pens, that one or two of them live on the other side 
of the world. 

Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain 
solstice, when the stars stand still in our inward 
firmament, and when there is required some foreign 
force, some diversion or alterative to prevent stag- 
nation. And, as a medical remedy, travel seems 
one of the best. Just as a man witnessing the ad- 
mirable effect of ether to lull pain, and meditating 
on the contingencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, 
rejoices in Dr. Jackson's benign discovery, so a 
man wlia looks at Paris, at Naples, or at London, 
says, ' If I should be driven from my own home, 
here, at least, my thoughts can be consoled by the 
most prodigal amusement and occupation which the 
human race in ages could contrive and accumulate.* 



128 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the aesthetic 
vahie of raih'oacls is to unite the advantages of town 
and country life, neither of which we can spare. 
A man should live in or near a large town, because, 
let liis own genius be what it may, it will repel 
quite as much of agreeable and valuable talent as it 
draws, and, in a city, the total attraction of all the 
citizens is sure to conquer, first or last, every repul- 
sion, and drag the most improbable hermit withir 
its walls some day in the year. In town, he can 
find the swimming-school, the gymnasium, the dan- 
cing-master, the shooting-gallery, opera, theatre, 
and panorama ; the chemist's shop, the museum of 
natural history ; the gallery of fine arts ; the na- 
tional orators, in their turn ; foreign travellers, the 
libraries, and his club. In the country, he can find 
solitude and reading, manly labor, cheap living, and 
his old shoes ; moors for game, hills for geology, 
and groves for devotion. Aubrey writes, " I have 
heard Thomas Hobbes say, that, in the Earl of 
Devon's house, in Derbyshire, there was a good 
library and books enough for him, and his lordship 
stored the library Avith what books he thought fit 
to be bouo;ht. But the want of o-ood conversa- 
tion was a very great inconvenience, and, though 
he conceived he could order his thinking as well 
as another, yet he found a great defect. In the 
country, in long time, for want of good conver- 
sation, one's understanding and invention con 



CULTURE. 12S 

tract a moss on them, like an old paling in an 
orchard." 

Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and 
New York take the nonsense out of a man. A 
great part of our education is sympathetic and so- 
cial. Boys and girls who have been brought up 
with well-informed and superior people, show in 
their manners an inestimable grace. Fuller says, 
that '' William, Earl of Nassau, won a subject from 
the King of Spam, every time he put off his hat." 
You cannot have one well-bred man, without a 
whole society of such. They keep each other up to 
any high point. Especially women ; — it requires a 
great many cultivated women, — saloons of bright, 
elegant, reading women, accustomed to ease and re- 
finement, to spectacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, 
and to elegant society, in order that you should 
have one Madame de Stael. The head of a com- 
mercial house, or a leading lawyer or politician is 
brought into daily contact with troops of men from 
all parts of the country, and those too the driving- 
wheels, the business men of each section, and one 
can hardly suggest for an apprehensive man a more 
searching culture. Besides, we must remember the 
high social possibilities of a million of men. The 
best bribe which London offers to-day to the im- 
agination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people 
and conditions, one can believe there is room for 
persons of romantic character to exist, and that the 

6* 



130 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront 
their counterparts. 

I wisli cities could teach their best lesson, — of 
quiet manners. It is the foible especially of Amer- 
ican youth, — pretension. The mark of the man 
of the world is absence of pretension. He does 
not make a speech ; he takes a low business-tone, 
avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises 
not at all, perforais much, speaks in monosyllables, 
hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its 
lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their 
sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the 
weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be 
surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his 
learning and philosophy. How the imagination is 
piqued by anecdotes of some great man passing in- 
cognito, as a king in gray clothes, — of Napoleon 
affecting a plain suit at his glittering levee ; of 
Burns, or Scott, or Beethoven, or Wellington, or 
Goethe, or any container of transcendent power, 
passing for nobody ; of Epaminondas, " who never 
says anything, but will listen eternally; " of Goethe, 
who preferred trifling subjects and common expres- 
sions in intercourse with strangers, worse rather 
than better clothes, and to appear a little more ca- 
pricious than he was. There are advantages in the 
old hat and box-coat. I have heard, that, through- 
out this country, a certain respect is paid to good 
broadcloth ; but dress makes a little restraint : men 



CULTURE. .131 

^^dll not commit themselves. But the box-coat is 
like wine ; it unlocks the tongue, and men say what 
they think. An old poet says, 

" Go far and go sparing, 
For you'll find it certain, 
The poorer and the baser you appear, 
The more you'll look through still." * 

Not much otherwise Milnes writes, in the " Lay of 
the Humble," 

" To me men are for what they are, 
They wear no masks with me." 

'Tis odd that our people should have — not water 
on the brain, — but a little gas there. A shrewd 
foreigner said of the Americans, that, " w^hatever 
they say has a little the air of a speech." Yet one 
of the traits down in the books as distinguishing the 
Anglo-Saxon, is, a trick of self-disparagement. To 
be sure, in old, dense countries, among a million of 
good coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinction, 
and you find humorists. In an English party, a 
man with no marked manners or features, with a 
face like red dough, unexpectedly discloses wit, 
learning, a wide range of topics, and personal fa- 
miliarity with good men in all parts of the world, 
UTitil you think you have fallen upon some illus- 
trious personage. Can it be that the American 

* Beaumont and Fletcher: The Tamer Tamed. 



132 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

forest has refreshed some weeds of old Pictish bar- 
barism just ready to die out, — the love of the scarlet 
feather, of beads, and tinsel ? The Italians are fond 
of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery ; 
and I remember one rainy morning in the city 
of Palermo, the street was in a blaze Avith scarlet 
mubrellas. The English have a plain taste. The 
equipages of the grandees are plain. A gorgeous 
livery indicates new and awkward city wealth. 
Mr. Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title of Mister 
good against any king in Europe. They have 
piqued themselves on governing the whole world 
in the poor, plain, dark Committee-room which the 
House of Commons sat in, before the fire. 

Whilst Ave want cities as the centres where the 
best things are found, cities degrade us by magnify- 
ing trifles. The countryman finds the town a chop- 
house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of 
grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and with 
them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among 
a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, ser- 
vile to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a 
fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the 
gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their 
OAvn ; but in cities they have betrayed you to a 
cloud of insignificant annoyances : 

" Jlirmidons, race feconde, 
Mirmidons, 
.. . Enfin nous comraandons; 



CULTURE. 133 

Jupiter livre le monde 

Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons." * 

'Tis heavy odds 

Against the gods, 

When they will match with myrmidons. 

We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 

Our turn to-day! we take command, 

Jove gives the globe into the hand 

Of myrmidons, of myrmidons. 

Wliat IS odious but noise, and people who scream 
and bewail ? people whose vane points always east, 
who live to dine, who send for the doctor, who cod- 
dle themselves, who toast their feet on the register, 
who intrigue to secure a padded chair, and a corner 
out of the drauo;ht. Suffer them once to beo;in the 
enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will go 
down on the unfinished tale. Let these triflers put 
us out of conceit with petty comforts. To a man 
at work, the frost is but a color : the rain, the 
wind, he forgot them when he came in. Let us 
learn to live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. 
The least habit of dominion over the palate has cer- 
tain good effects not easily estimated. Neither will 
we be driven into a quiddling abstemiousness. 'Tis 
a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is 
made at last of the same chemical atoms. 

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little 
wants. How can you mind diet, bed, dress, or 
salutes or compliments, or the figure you make in 

* Bdranger. 



134 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

company, or wealtli, or even the bringing things to 
pass, when yon think how paltry are the machinery 
and the workers ? Wordsworth was praised to me, 
in Westmoreland, for having afforded to his countiy 
neighbors an example of a modest household where 
comfort and culture were secured, without display. 
And a tender boy who w^ears his rusty cap and out- 
grown coat, that he may secure the coveted place in 
college, and the right in the library, is educated to 
some purj^ose. There is a great deal of self-denial 
and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in 
town and country, that has not got into literature, 
and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet ; that 
saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials ; that 
goes rusty, and educates the boy ; that sells the 
horse, but builds the school ; works early and late, 
takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six 
looms, but pays off the mortgage on the pater- 
nal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work 
again. 

We can ill spare the commanding social benefits 
of cities ; they must be used ; yet cautiously, and 
haughtily, — and will yield their best values to him 
who best can do without them. Keep the town for 
occasions, but the habits should be formed to retire- 
ment. Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to 
genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter 
where moult the wings which will bear it farther 
than suns and stars. He who should inspire rmd 



CULTUIIE. 135 

lead his race must be defended from travelling with 
the souls of other men, from living, breathing, read- 
ing, and writing in the daily, time-worn yohe of 
their opinions. " In the morning, — solitude ; " 
said Pythagoras ; that Nature may speak to the 
imagination, as she does never in company, and 
that her favorite may make acquaintance with those 
divine strengths which disclose themselves to se- 
rious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain 
that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, 
Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but 
descended into it from time to time as benefactors : 
and the wise instructor will press this point of se- 
curing to the young soul in the disposition of time 
and the arrangements of living, periods and habits 
of solitude. The high advantage of university-life 
is often the mere mechanical one, I may call it, 
of a separate chamber and fire, — which parents 
will allow the boy without hesitation at Cam- 
bridge, but do not think needful at home. We 
say solitude, to mark the character of the tone of 
thought ; but if it can be shared between two or 
more than two, it is happier, and not less noble. 
"We four," wrote Neander to his sacred friends, 
" will enjoy at Halle the inward blessedness of a 
eivitas Dei, wdiose foundations are forever friend- 
ship. The more I know you, the more I dissat- 
isfy and must dissatisfy all my wonted companions. 
Their very presence stupefies me. The common 



136 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

understanding withdraws itself from the one centre 
of all existence." 

Solitude takes off the pressure of present impor- 
tunities that more catholic and humane relations 
may appear. The saint and poet seek privacy to 
ends the most public and . universal : and it is the 
secret of culture, to interest the man more in his 
public, than in his private quality. Here is a new 
poem, which elicits a good many comments in the 
journals, and in conversation. From these it is 
easy, at last, to eliminate the verdict which readers 
passed upon it; and that is, in the main, unfavor- 
able. The poet, as a craftsman, is only interested 
in the praise accorded to him, and not in the cen- 
sure, though it be just. And the poor little poet 
hearkens only to that, and rejects the censure, as 
proving incapacity in the critic. But the poet cul- 
tivated becomes a stockholder in both companies, — 
say Mr. Curfew, — in the Curfew stock, and in the 
humanity stock ; and, in the last, exults as much in 
the demonstration of the unsoundness of Curfew, as 
his interest in the former gives him pleasure in the 
currency of Curfew. For, the depreciation of his 
Curfew stock only shows the immense values of the 
humanity stock. As soon as he sides with his 
critic against himself, with joy, he is a cultivated 
man. 

We must have an intellectual quality in all prop- 
erty and in all action, or they are nought. I must 



CULTURE. 137 

have children, I must have events, I must have a 
social state and history, or my thinking and speak- 
ing want body or basis. But to give these acces- 
sories any value, I must know them as contingent 
and rather showy possessions, which pass for more 
to the people than to me. We see this abstraction 
in scholars, as a matter of course : but what a charm 
it adds when observed in practical men. Bonaparte, 
like CiEsar, was intellectual, and could look at every 
object for itself, without affection. Though an ego- 
tist a Voutrance^ he could criticize a play, a build- 
ing, a character, on universal grounds, and give a 
just opinion. A man known to us only as a ce- 
lebrity in politics or in trade, gains largely in our 
esteem if we discover that he has some intellectual 
taste or skill ; ac when we learn of Lord Fairfax, 
the Long Parliament's general, his passion for anti- 
quarian studies ; or of the French regicide Carnot, 
his sublime genius in mathematics ; or of a living 
banker, his success in poetry ; or of a partisan 
journalist, his devotion to ornithology. So, if in 
travelling in the dreary wildernesses of Arkansas 
or Texas, we should observe on the next seat a 
man reading Horace, or Martial, or Calderon, we 
should wish to huo; him. In callino;s that re- 
quire roughest energy, soldiers, sea-captains, and 
civil engineers sometimes betray a fine insight, if 
only through a certain gentleness when off' duty ; 
a good-natured admission that there are illusions, 



138 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and who shall say that he is not their sport? 
We only vary the phrase, not the doctrine, when 
we say, that culture opens the sense of beauty. 
A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, 
and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in 
the social machine, cannot be said to have arri\'ed 
at self-possession. I suffer, every day, from the 
want of perception of beauty in people. They do 
not know the charm with which all moments and 
objects can be embellished, the charm of man- 
ners, of self-command, of benevolence. Repose 
and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman, 
— repose in energy. The Greek battle-pieces are 
calm ; the heroes, in whatever violent actions en- 
gaged, retain a serene aspect ; as we say of Niag- 
ara, that it falls without speed. A cheerful, intelli- 
gent face is the end of culture, and success enough. 
For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom 
attained. 

When our higher fliculties are in activity, we are 
domesticated, and awkwardness and discomfort giv^e 
place to natural and agreeable movements. It is 
noticed, that the consideration of the great periods 
and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, 
and an indifference to death. The influence of fine 
scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our 
irritations and elevates our friendships. Even a 
high dome, and the expansive interior of a cathe- 
di'al, have x sensible effect r.n manners. I havo 



CULTURE. 139 

heard that stiff people lose something of their awk- 
wardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. 
I think, sculpture and painting have an effect to 
teach us manners, and abolish hurry. 

But, over all, culture must reinforce from higher 
influx the empirical skills of eloquence, or of poli- 
tics, or of trade, and the useftd arts. There is a 
certain loftiness of thought and power to marshal 
and adjust particulars, which can only come from 
an insio-ht of their whole connection. The orator 
who has once seen things in their divine order, will 
never quite lose sight of this, and will come to affairs 
as from a higher ground, and, though he will say 
nothing of philosophy, he will have a certain mas- 
tery in dealing with them, and an incapableness of 
being dazzled or frighted, which will distinguish his 
handling from that of attorneys and fictors. A 
man who stands on a 2;ood footino; with the heads 
of parties at Washington, reads the rumors of the 
newspapers, and the guesses of provincial poli- 
ticians, wdth a key to the right and wrong in each 
statement, and sees well enough where all this will 
end. Archimedes will look through your Connect- 
icut machine, at a glance, and judge of its fitness. 
And much more, a wise man who knows not only 
what Plato, but what Saint John can show him, 
can easily raise the affair he deals with, to a certain 
majesty. Plato says, Pericles owed this elevation to 
the lessons of Anaxaororas. Burke descended from 



140 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

a higher sphere when he would influence human 
affairs. Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Washington, 
stood on a fine humanity, before which the brawls 
of modern senates are but pot-house politics. 

But there are higher secrets of culture, which 
are not for the apprentices, but for pioficlents. 
These are lessons only for the brave. We must 
know our friends under ugly masks. The calami- 
ties are our friends. Ben Jonson specifies in his 
address to the Muse : — 

" Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will, 
And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 
Make him lose all his friends, and, what is Averse, 
Almost all ways to any better course; 
With me thou leav'st a better iluse than thee, 
And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty." 

We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at 
heroism. But the wiser God says. Take the shame, 
the poverty, and the penal solitude, that belong to 
truth-speaking. Try the rough water as well as 
the smooth. RouMi water can teach lessons worth 
knowing. When the state is unquiet, personal qual- 
ities are more than ever decisive. Fear not a revo- 
lution which will constrain you to live five years in 
one. Don't be so tender at making an enemy now 
and then. Be willing to go to Coventry sometimes, 
and let the populace bestow on you their coldest 
contempts. The finished man of the world must 
eat of every apple once. He must hold his hatreds 



CULTURE. 141 

also at arm's length, and not remember spite. He 
has neither friends nor enemies, but values men 
only as channels of power. 

He who aims high, must dread an easy home and 
popular manners. Heaven sometimes hedges a rare 
clniacter about with ungainliness and odium, as the 
burr that protects the fruit. If there is any great 
and good thing in store for you, it will not come at 
the first or the second call, nor in the shape of fash- 
ion, ease, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is 
for dolls. " Steep and craggy," said Porphyry, " is 
the path of the gods." Open your Marcus Anto- 
ninus. In the opinion of the ancients, he was the 
great man who scorned to shine, and who contested 
the frowns of fortune. They preferred the noble 
vessel too late for the tide, contending with winds 
and weaves, dismantled and unrigged, to her com- 
panion borne into harbor with colors flying and 
guns firing. There is none of the social goods that 
may not be purchased too dear, and mere amiable- 
ness must not take rank with high aims and self- 
subsistency. 

Bettine replies to Goethe's mother, who chides 
her disregard of dress, — " If I cannot do as I have 
a mind, in our poor Frankfort, I shall not carry 
things far." And the youth must rate at its true 
mark the inconceivable levity of local opinion. 
The longer we live, the more we must endure the 
elementary existence of men and women ; and 



142 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

every brave heart must treat society as a child, and 
never allow it to dictate. 

" All that class of the severe and restrictive 
virtues," said. Burke, " are almost too costly for 
humanity." Who wishes to be severe ? Who 
wishes to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf 
of the poor, and low, and impolite ? and who that 
dares do it, can keep his temper sweet, his frolic 
spirits ? The high virtues are not debonair, but 
have their redress in being illustrious at last. 
What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of 
mankind, to those who stood firm against the oj^in- 
ion of their contemporaries ! The measure of a 
master is his success in bringing all men round to 
his opinion twenty years later. 

Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too 
early. In talking with scholars, I observe that they 
lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood 
which alone could give imaginative literature a re- 
ligious and infinite quality in their esteem. I find, 
too, that the chance for appreciation is much in- 
creased by being the son of an appreciator, and that 
these boys who now grow up are caught not only 
years too late, but two or three births too late, to 
make the best scholars of. And I think it a pre- 
sentable motive to a scholar, that, as, in an old com- 
munity, a well-born proprietor is usually found, after 
the first heats of youth, to be a careful husband, and 
to leel a habitual desire that the estate shall suffer 



CULTURE. 143 

no harm by his administration, but shall be deliv- 
ered down to the next heir in as good condition as 
he received it ; — so, a considerate man Avill reckon 
himself a subject of that secular melioration by 
which mankind is mollified, cured, and refined, and 
will shun every expenditure of his forces on pleas- 
m*e or gain, which will jeopardize this social and 
secular accumulation. 

The fossil strata show us that Nature besan with 
rudimental forms, and rose to the more complex, as 
fast as the earth was fit for their dwelling-place ; and 
that the lower perish, as the higher appear. Very 
few of our race can be said to be yet finished men. 
We still carry sticking to us some remains of the 
preceding inferior quadruped organization. We 
call these millions men ; but they are not yet men. 
Half-engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man 
needs all the music that can be brought to disen- 
gage him. If Love, red Love, with tears and joy ; 
if Want with his scourge ; if War with his cannon- 
ade ; if Christianity with its charity ; if Trade with 
its money ; if Art with its portfolios ; if Science 
with her telegraphs through the deeps of space and 
time ; can set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud 
taps on the tough chrysalis, can break its walls, and 
let the new creature emerge erect and free, — make 
way, and sing pasan ! The age of the quadruped 
is to go out, — the age of the brain and of the heart 
is to come in. The time will come when the evil 



144 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

forms we have knowTi can no more be organized. 
IMan's culture can spare nothing, wants all the 
material. He is to convert all impediments into 
instruments, all enemies into power. The formi- 
dable mischief will only make the more useful slave. 
And if one shall read the future of the race hinted 
in the organic effort of Nature to mount and melio- 
rate, and the corresponding impulse to the Better 
in the human being, we shall dare affirm that there 
is nothing he will not overcome and convert, until 
at last culture shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. 
He will convert the Furies into Muses, and the 
hells into benefit. 



V. 

BEHAVIOR, 



Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 

Build this golden portal ; 

Graceful women, chosen men 

Dazzle every mortal : 

Their sweet and lofty countenance 

His enchanting food ; 

He need not go to them, their forms 

Beset his solitude. 

He looketh seldom in their face, 

His eyes explore the ground, 

The green grass is a looking-glass 

Whereon their traits are found. 

Little he says to them, 

So dances his heart in his breast, 

Their tranquil mien bereaveth him 

Of wit, of words, of rest. 

Too weak to win, too fond to shun 

The tyrants of his doom, 

The much deceived Endymion 

Slips behind a tomb. 



BEHAVIOR. 

The soul -w^hich animates Nature is not less sig- 
riificantlj published in the figure, movement, and 
gesture of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle 
of articulate speech. This silent and subtile lan- 
guage is Manners ; not wliat^ but lioiv. Life ex- 
presses. A statue has no tongue, and needs 
none. Good tableaux do not need declamation. 
Nature tells every secret once. Yes, but in man 
she tells it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, 
mien, face, and parts of the face, and by the whole 
action of the machine. The visible carriage or ac- 
tion of the individual, as resulting from his organ- 
ization and his will combined, we call manners. 
What are they but thought entering the hands and 
feet, controlling the movements of the body, the 
speech and behavior ? 

There is always a best way of doing everything, 
if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy 
ways of doing things ; each once a stroke of genius 
or of love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. 
They form at last a rich varnish, with which the 
routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. 



148 CONDUCT uF LIFE. 

If they are superficial, so are the clew-diops which 
give such a depth to the morning meadows. Man- 
ners are very communicable : men catch them 
from each other. Consuelo, in the romance, boasts 
of the lessons she had given the nobles in manners, 
on the stage ; and, in real life, Talma taught 
Napoleon the arts of behavior. Genius invents 
fine manners, which the baron and the baroness 
copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, 
better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson 
they have learned into a mode. 

The power of manners is incessant, — an element 
as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in 
any country be disguised, and no more in a republic 
or a democracy, than in a kingdom. No man can 
resist their influence. There are certain manners 
which are learned in good society, of that force, 
that, if a person have them, he or she must be con- 
sidered, and is everywhere welcome, though with- 
out beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a boy 
address and accomplishments, and you give him 
the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. 
He has not the trouble of earning or owning them * 
they solicit him to enter and possess. We send 
girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the board- 
ing-school, to the riding-school, to the ballroom, or 
wheresoever they can come into acquaintance and 
nearness of leading persons of their own sex ; where 
they might learn address, and see it near at hand. 



BEHAVIOR. 149 

The power of a woman of fashion to lead, and also 
to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that 
she knows resources and behaviors not known lo 
them ; but when these have mastered her secret, 
they learn to confront her, and recover their self- 
l ossession. 

Every day bears witness to their gentle rule 
People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. 
The mediocre circle learns to demand that which 
belono-s to a hio;h state of nature or of culture. 
Your manners are always under examination, and 
by committees little suspected, — a police in citi- 
zens' clothes, — but are awarding or denying you 
very high prizes when you least think of it. 

We talk much of utilities, — but 'tis our manners 
that associate us. In hours of business, we go to 
him who knows, or has, or does this or that which 
we want, and we do not let our taste or feeling 
stand in the way. But this activity over, we re- 
turn to the indolent state, and wish for those we 
can be at ease with ; those who will go where we 
go, whose manners do not offend us, whose social 
tone chimes with ours. When we reflect on tlieir 
persuasive and cheering force ; how they recom- 
mend, prepare, and draw people together ; how, in 
all clubs, manners make the members ; how man- 
ners make the fortune of the ambitious youth ; that, 
for the most part, his manners marry him, and, for 
the most part, he marries manners ; when we think 



150 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

what keys they are, and to what secrets ; what high 
lessons and inspiring tokens of character they con 
vey ; and what divination is reqnired in us, for the 
reading of this fine telegraph, we see what range 
the subject has, and what relations to convenience, 
power, and beauty. 

Their first service is very low, — when they are 
the minor morals : but 'tis the beginning of civility, 
-to make us, I mean, endurable to each other. 
We prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent 
force ; to get people out of the quadruped state ; to 
get them washed, clothed, and set up on end ; to 
slough their animal husks and habits ; compel them 
to be clean ; overawe their spite and meanness, 
teach them to stifle the base, and choose the gen- 
erous expression, and make them know how much 
happier the generous behaviors are. 

Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is 
infested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous 
persons who prey upon the rest, and whom, a pub- 
lic opinion concentrated into good manners, forms 
accepted by the sense of all, can reach : — the con- 
tradictors and railers at public and private tables, 
who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a 
dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the 
honors of the house by barking him out of sight : — - 
I have seen men who neigh like a horse when you 
contradict them, or say something which they do 
not understand : — then the overbold, who make 



BEHAVIOR. 151 

their own invitation to your hearth ; the persever- 
ing talker, who gives you his society in large, satu- 
rating closes ; the pitiers of themselves, — a perilous 
class ; the frivolous Asmocleus, who relies on you to 
find him in ropes of sand to twist ; the monotones ; 
in short, every stripe of absurdity ; — these are 
social inflictions which the mao;istrate cannot cure 
or defend you from, and which must be intrusted 
to the restraining force of custom, and proverbs, 
and familiar rules of behavior impressed on young 
people in their school-days. 

In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, 
they print, or used to print, among the rules of the 
house, that " no gentleman can be permitted to 
come to the public table without his coat ; " and 
in the same country, in the pews of the churches, 
little placards plead with the worshipper against the 
fury of expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacri- 
ficingly undertook the reformation of our American 
manners in unspeakable particulars. I think the 
lesson was not quite lost ; that it held bad man- 
ners up, so that the churls could see the deformity. 
Unhappily, the book had its own deformities. It 
ought not to need to print in a reading-room a cau- 
tion to strangers not to speak loud ; nor to persons 
who look over fine enoTavino^s, that thev should be 
Handled like cobwebs and butterflies' wings ; nor 
to persons who look at marble statues, that they 
shall not smite them with canes. But, even in the 



152 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

perfect civilization of this city, such cautions are 
not quite needless in the Athenaeum and City 
Library. 

Manners are factitious, and grow out of circum- 
stance as well as out of character. If you look at 
the pictures of patricians and of peasants, of differ- 
ent periods and countries, you will see how Avell 
they match the same classes in our towns. The 
modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian's 
Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues, 
but also in the pictures which Commodore Perry 
brought home of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands 
and great interests not only arrive to such heads as 
can manage them, but form manners of power. A 
keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank, or 
see in the manners the degree of homage the party 
is wont to receive. A prince who is accustomed 
every day to be courted and deferred to by the 
highest grandees, acquires a corresponding expec- 
tation, and a becoming mode of receiving and 
replying to this homage. 

There are always exceptional people and modes. 
English grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse 
is a fop, and, iinder the finish of dress, and levity of 
behavior, hides the terror of his war. But Nature 
and Destiny are honest, and never fail to leave their 
mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every 
quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and 
perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the 



BEHAVIOR. 153 

whole secret when he has learned, that disentailed 
manners are commanding. Don't be deceived by 
a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have 
strong wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old 
statesman, who had sat all his life in courts Lnd 
in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme 
irritability of face, voice, and bearing : when he 
spoke, his voice would not serve him ; it cracked, 
it broke, it wheezed, it piped ; — little cared he ; he 
knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech 
his argument and his indignation. When he sat 
down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort of fit, and 
held on to his chair with both hands : but under- 
neath all this irritability, was a puissant will, firm, 
and advancing, and a memory in which lay in order 
and method like geologic strata every fact of his 
history, and under the control of his will. 

Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there 
must be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all 
culture is vain. The obstinate prejudice in favor 
of blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and 
monarchical fabrics of the old world, has some rea- 
son in common experience. Every man, — mathe- 
matician, artist, soldier, or merchant, — looks with 
confidence for some traits and talents in his own 
child, which he would not dare to presume in the 
child of a stranger. The Orientalists are very or- 
thodox on this point. " Take a thorn-bush," said 
the emir Abdel-Kader, " and sprinkle it for a whole 

7* 



154 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

year with water ; — it will yield nothing but tliorns. 
Take a date-tree, leave it "without culture, and it 
will always produce dates. Nobility is the date- 
tree, and the Arab populace is a bush of thorns.'^ 

A main fact in the history of manners is the 
wonderful expressiveness of the human body. If it 
were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts 
were written on steel tablets within, it could not 
publish more truly its meaning than now. Wise 
men read very sharply all your private history 
in your look and gait and behavior. The whole 
economy of nature is bent on expression. The 
tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Ge- 
neva watches with crystal faces which expose the 
whole movement. They carry tlie liquor of life 
flowing up and down in these beautiful bottles, and 
announcing to the curious how it is with them. 
The face and eyes reveal what the spirit is doing, 
how old it is, what aims it has. The eyes indicate 
the antiquity of the soul, or, through how many 
forms it has already ascended. It almost violates 
ihe proprieties, if we say above the breath here, 
what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter 
to every street passenger. 

Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far 
seems imperfect. In Siberia, a late traveller found 
men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with 
their unarmed eye. In some respects the animals 
«xcel us. The birds have a longer sight, beside the 



BEHAVIOR. 155 

advantage by their wings of a higher observatory. 
A cow can bid her cali, by secret signal, prob- 
ably of the eye, to run away, or to lie down and 
hide itself. The jockeys say of certain horses, that 
" they look over the whole ground." The out- 
door life, and hunting, and labor, give equal vigor 
to the human eye. A farmer looks out at you as 
strong as the horse ; his eye-beam is like the stroke 
of a staff. An eye can threaten like a loaded and 
levelled gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking ; 
or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can 
make the heart dance with joy. 

The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. 
When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and re- 
main gazing at a distance ; in enumerating the 
names of persons or of countries, as France, Ger- 
many, Spain, Turkey, the eyes wink at each new 
name. There is no nicety of learning sought by 
the mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquiring. 
" An artist," said Michel Angelo, " must have his 
measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye ; " 
and there is no end to the catalogue of its perform 
ances, whether in indolent vision, (that of health 
and beauty,) or in strained vision, (that of art and 
labor.) 

Eyes are bold as lions, — roving, running, leap- 
ing, here and there, far and near. They speak all 
languages. They wait for no introduction ; they 
are no Englishmen ; ask no leave of age, or rank ; 



156 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

tliey respect neither poverty nor riches, neithei 
learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but in- 
trude, and come again, and go through and through 
you, in a moment of time. What inundation of 
life and thought is discharged from one soul into 
another, through them ! The glance is natural 
magic. The mysterious communication established 
across a house between two entire strangers, moves 
all the springs of wonder. The communication by 
the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the 
control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of iden- 
tity of nature. We look into the eyes to know if 
this other form is another self, and the eyes will 
not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhab- 
itant is there. The revelations are sometimes ter- 
rific. The confession of a low, usurping devil is 
there made, and the observer shall seem to feel the 
stirring of owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, where 
he looked for innocence and simplicity. 'Tis re- 
markable, too, that the spirit that appears at the 
>vindows of the house does at once invest himself in 
a new form of liis own, to the mind of the beholder. 
The eyes of men converse as much as their 
tongues, with the advantage, that the ocular dia- 
lect needs no dictionary, but is miderstood all the 
world over. When the eyes say one tiling, and the 
tongue another, a practised man relies on the lan- 
guage of the first. If the man is off his centre, 
the eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of 



BEHAVIOR. 157 

your companion, whether your argument hits him, 
thougli his tongue will not confess it. There is a 
look by which a man shows he is going to say a 
good thing, and a look when he has said it. Vain 
and foro-otten are all the fine offers and offices 
)f hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye. 
How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, 
though dissembled by the lips ! One comes away 
from a company, in which, it may easily happen, 
he has said notliing, and no important remark has 
been addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy 
with the society, he shall not have a sense of this 
fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into 
him, and out from him, through the eyes. There 
are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission 
into the man than blueberries. Others are liquid 
and deep, — wells that a man might fall into ; — 
others are aggressive and devouring, seem to call 
out the police, take all too much notice, and require 
crowded Broadways, and the security of millions, 
to protect individuals against them. The military 
eye I meet, now darkly sparkling under clerical, 
now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of Lace- 
daemon ; 'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking 
eyes, asserting eyes, prowhng eyes ; and eyes full 
of fate, — some of good, and some of sinister omen. 
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or 
%rocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It 
must be a victory achieved in the will, before it 



158 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

can be signified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that 
each man carries in his eye the exact indication of 
his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are 
always learning to read it. A complete man should 
need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. Who- 
ever looked on hmi would consent to his will, being 
certified that his aims were generous and universal. 
The reason why men do not obey us, is because 
they see the mud at the bottom of our eye. 

If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, 
the other features have their own. A man finds 
room in the few square inches of the face for the 
traits of all his ancestors ; for the expression of 
all his history, and his wants. The sculptor, and 
Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how sig- 
nificant a feature is the nose ; how its forms express 
strength or weakness of will, and good or bad tem- 
per. The nose of Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of 
Pitt, suggest " the terrors of the beak." What 
refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray I 
" Beware you don't laugh," said the \^dse mother, 
" for then you show all your faults." 

Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he 
called " TMorie de la demarche^^ in which he 
says : " The look, the voice, the respiration, and the 
attitude or walk, are identical. But, as it has not 
been given to man, the power to stand guard, at 
once, over these four different simultaneous expres- 
sions of his thought, watch that one which speaks 



BEHAVIOR. 159 

out the truth, and you will know the whole 
man." 

Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of 
manners, which, in the idle and expensive society 
dwelling in them, are raised to a high art. The 
maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm 
and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embel- 
Jishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncom- 
fortable feeling, are essential to the courtier : and 
Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, 
and an encyclopaedia of Memoires^ will instruct you, 
if you wish, in those potent secrets. Thus, it is a 
point of pride with kings, to remember faces and 
names. It is reported of one prince, that his head 
had the air of leaning downwards, in order not to 
humble the crowd. There are people who come in 
ever like a child w^ith a piece of good news. It 
was said of the late Lord Holland, that he always 
came down to breakfast with the air of a man who 
had just met with some signal good-fortune. In 
'•''Noire Dame^^ the grandee took his place on the 
dais, with the look of one who is thinking of some- 
thing else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop 
at palace-doors. 

Fine manners need the support of fine manners 
in others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or 
he may not. The enthusiast is introduced to pol- 
ished scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced 
by finding himself not in their element. They all 



160 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

have somewhat whicli he has not, and, it seems, 
ought to have. But if he finds the scholar apart 
from his companions, it is then the enthusiast's 
turn, and the scholar has no defence, but must deal 
on his terms. Now they must fight the battle out 
on their private strengths. What is the talent 
of that character so common, — the successful man 
of the world, — in all marts, senates, and drawing- 
rooms ? Manners : manners of power ; sense to 
see his advantage, and manners up to it. See him 
approach his man. He knows that troops behave 
as they are handled at first; — that is his cheap 
secret; just what happens to every two persons who 
meet on any affair, — one instantly perceives that 
he has the key of the situation, that his will com- 
prehends the other's will, as the cat does the mouse; 
and he has only to use courtesy, and furnish good- 
natured reasons to his victim to cover up the chain, 
lest he be shamed into resistance. 

The theatre in which this science of manners 
has a formal importance is not with us a court, but 
dress-circles, wherein, after the close of the day's 
business, men and women meet at leisure, for mu- 
tual entertainment, in ornamented di'awing-rooms. 
Of course, it has every variety of attraction and 
merit : but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens 
who have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it 
highly. A well-dressed, talkative company, where 
eacli is bent to amuse the other. — yet the high-bom 



BEHAVIOR. 1 61 

Turk who came hither fancied that every woman 
seemed to be suffering for a chair ; that all the 
talkers were brained and exhausted by the deoxy- 
genated air : it spoiled the best persons : it put 
all on stilts. Yet here are the secret biographies 
written and read. The aspect of that man is repul- 
sive : I do not wish to deal with him. The other 
is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth 
ioolis humble and manly : I choose him. Look on 
this woman. There is not beauty, nor brilliant 
sayings, nor distmguished power to serve you ; but 
all see her gladly; her whole air and impression 
are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and 
the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in 
coming into the world, and has always increased it 
since. Here are creep-mouse manners ; and thiev- 
ish manners. " Look at Northcote," said Fuseli ; 
" he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the 
shallow company, easily excited, easily tired, here 
is the columnar Bernard : the Alleghanies do not 
express more repose than his behavior. Here are 
the sweet following eyes of Cecile : it seemed al- 
ways that she demanded the heart. Nothing can 
be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace 
of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has 
no manners, has better manners than she ; for the 
movements of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit 
which is sufficient for the moment, and she can 
afford to express every thought by instajit action. 



162 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Manners have been somewhat cynically defined 
to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a 
distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who 
do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her 
attentions. Society is very swift in its instin(its, 
and, if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers a 
you; or quietly drops you. The first weapon en- 
rages the party attacked ; the second is still more 
effective, but is not to be resisted, as the date of the 
transaction is not easily found. People grow up 
and grow old under this infliction, and never sus- 
pect the truth, ascribing the solitude which acts on 
them very injuriously, to any cause but the right 
one. 

The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Ne- 
cessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. 
Those who are not self-possessed, obtrude, and pain 
us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a 
Pariah caste. They fear to offend, they bend and 
apologize, and walk through life with a timid step. 
As we sometimes dream that we are in a well- 
dressed company without any coat, so Godfrey acts 
ever as if he suffered from some mortifying circum- 
stance. The hero should find himself at home, 
wherever he is ; should impart comfort by his own 
security and good-nature to all beholders. The 
hero is suffered to be himself. A person of strong 
mind comes to perceive that for him an immunity is 
secured so long as he renders to society that service 



BEHAVIOR. 1G3 

which is native and proper to him, — an immunity 
from all the observances, yea, and duties, which 
society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file 
of its members. " Euripides," says Aspasia, " has 
not the fine manners of Sophocles; but," — she 
adds sood-humoredlv, " the movers and masters of 
our souls have surely a right to throw out their 
limbs as carelessly as they please, on the world that 
belongs to them, and before the creatui'es they have 
animated." * 

Manners require time, as nothing is more vul- 
gar than haste. Friendship should be surrounded 
with ceremonies and respects, and not cnished into 
comers. Friendship requires more time than poor 
busy men can usually command. Here comes to 
me Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading 
and in wrapping him like a divine cloud or holy 
ghost. 'Tis a great destitution to both that this 
should not be entertained with large leisures, 
but contrariwise should be balked by importunate 
affairs. 

But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is 
ever shining. 'Tis hard to keep the ivTiat from 
breaking through this pretty painting of the Jioiv. 
The core will come to the surface. Strong will 
and keen perception overpower old manners, and 
create new ; and the thought of the present mo- 
ment has a greater value than all the past. In 

* Landor: PeHcles and Aspasia. 



164 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

persons of character, we do not remark manners, 
because of their instantaneousness. We are sur- 
prised by tlie thing done, out of all power to watch 
the way of it. Yet nothing is more charming than 
to recognize the great style which runs through 
the actions of such. People masquerade before us 
in their fortunes, titles, offices, and connections, as 
academic or civil presidents, or senators, or profes- 
sors, or great lawyers, and impose on the frivolous, 
and a good deal on each other, by these fames. At 
least, it is a point of prudent good manners to treat 
these reputations tenderly, as if they were merited. 
But the sad realist knows these fellows at a glance, 
and they know him ; as when in Paris the chief 
of the police enters a ballroom, so many diamonded 
pretenders shrink and make themselves as incon- 
spicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating 
look as they pass. " I had received," said a sibyl, 
" I had received at birth the fatal gift of penetra- 
tion : " — and these Cassandras are always born. 

Manners impress as they indicate real power. A 
man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and 
contented expression, which everybody reads. And 
you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, 
except by making him the kind of man of whom 
that manner is the natiu'al expression. Nature for- 
ever puts a premium on reality. What is done for 
effect, is seen to be done for effect ; what is done 
for love, is felt to be done for love. A man inspires 



BEHAVIOR. 165 

affection and honor, because he was not lying in 
wait for these. The things of a man for which we 
visit him, were done in the dark and the cold. A 
little integrity is better than any career. So deep 
are the sources of this surface-action, that even the 
size of your companion seems to vary with his free- 
dom of thought. Not only is he larger, when at 
ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything 
around him becomes variable with expression. No 
carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, will measure the 
dimensions of any house or house-lot : go into the 
house : if the proprietor is constrained and defer- 
ring, 'tis of no importance hoAV large his house, how 
beautiful his grounds, — you quickly come to the 
end of all : but if the man is self-possessed, happy, 
and at home, his house is deep-founded, indefinitely 
large and interesting, the roof and dome buoyant 
as the sky. Under the humblest roof, the common- 
est person in plain clothes sits there massive, cheer- 
ful, yet formidable like the Egyptian colossi. 

Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor 
Champollion has set down the grammar-rules of 
this dialect, older than Sanscrit ; but they who can- 
not yet read English, can read this. Men take each 
other's measure, when they meet for the first time, 
— and every time they meet. How do they get 
this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of 
each other's power and dispositions ? One would 
say, that the persuasion of their speech is not in 



166 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

what they say, — or, that men do not convince by 
their argument, — but by their personality, by who 
they are, and what they said and did heretofore. 
A man ah-eady strong is hstened to, and everything 
he says is applauded. Another opposes him witli 
sound argument, but the argument is scouted, until 
by and by it gets into the mind of some weighty 
person ; then it begins to tell on the community. 

Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the 
guaranty that the powers are not squandered in 
too much demonstration. In this country, where 
school education is universal, we have a superficial 
culture, and a profusion of reading and writing and 
expression. We parade our nobilities in poems and 
orations, instead of working them up into happiness. 
There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can 
understand it, — ' whatever is known to thyself 
alone, has always very great value.' There is some 
reason to believe, that, when a man does not write 
his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, 
instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his 
form and manners, whilst poets have often noth- 
ing poetical about them except their verses. Jacohi 
said, that " when a man has fully expressed his 
thought, he has somewhat less possession of it." 
One would say, the rule is, — What a man is irre- 
sistibly urged to say, helps him and us. In explain- 
ing his thought to others, he explains it to himself: 
but when he opens it for show, it corinipts him. 



BEHAVIOR. 167 

Society is the stage on whicli manners are 
shown ; novels are their literature. Novels are 
the journal or record of manners ; and the new im- 
portance of these books derives from the fact, that 
the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and 
treat this part of life more worthily. The novels 
used to be all alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. 
The novels used to lead us on to a foolish interest 
hi the fortunes of the boy and girl they described. 
The boy was to be raised from a humble to a high 
position. He was in want of a wife and a castle, 
and the object of the story was to supply him with 
one or both. We watched sympathetically, step by 
step, his climbing, until, at last, the point is gained, 
the wedding day is fixed, and we follow the gala 
procession home to the castle, when the doors are 
slammed in our face, and the poor reader is left 
outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an 
idea, or a virtuous impulse. 

But the victories of character are instant, and 
victories for all. Its greatness enlarges all. "We 
are fortified by every heroic anecdote. The novels 
are as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, 
that the best of life is conversation, and the great- 
est success is confidence, or perfect understanding 
between sincere people. 'Tis a French definition 
of friendship, rien que 8* entendre^ good understand- 
ing. The highest compact we can make with our 
fellow, is, — ' Let there be truth between us two 



168 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

forevermore.' That is the charm in all good nov- 
els, as it is the charm in all good histories, that the 
heroes mutually understand, from the first, and deal 
loyally, and with a profound trust in each other. 
It is sublime to feel and say of another, I need 
never meet, or speak, or write to him : we need 
not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remem- 
brance : I rely on him as on myself: if he did 
thus or thus, I know it was right. 

In all the superior people I have met, I notice 
directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything 
of obstruction, of malformation, had been trained 
away. What have they to conceal ? What have 
they to exhibit ? Between simple and noble per- 
sons, there is always a quick intelligence : they 
recognize at sight, and meet on a better ground 
than the talents and skills they may chance to 
possess, namely, on sincerity and uprightness. For, 
it is not what talents or genius a man has, but 
how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship 
and character. The man that stands by himself, 
the universe stands by him also. It is related 
of the monk Basle, that, being excommunicated by 
the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of an 
angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell ; but, 
such was the eloquence and good-humor of the 
monk, that, wherever he went he was received 
gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most un- 
civil angels : and, when he came to discourse with 



BEHAVIOR. 169 

them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they 
took his part, and adopted his manners : and even 
good angels came from far, to see him, and take up 
their ahode with him. The angel that was sent 
to find a place of torment for him, attempted to 
remove hirtl to a worse pit, but with no better suc- 
cess ; for such was the contented spirit of the monk, 
that he found something to praise in every place 
and company, though in hell, and made a kind of 
heaven of it. At last the escorting angel returned 
with his prisoner to them that sent him, saying, 
that no phlegethon could be found that would burn 
him ; for that, in whatever condition, Basle re- 
mained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says, his 
sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go 
into heaven, and was canonized as a saint. 

There is a stroke of magnanimity in the corre- 
spondence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, 
when the latter was King of Spain, and complained 
that he missed in Napoleon's letters the affectionate 
tone which had marked their childish correspond- 
ence. " I am sorry," replies Napoleon, " you 
think you shall find your brother again only in the 
Elysian Fields. It is natural, that at forty, he should 
not feel towards you as he did at twelve. But his 
feelings towards you have greater truth and strength. 
His friendship has the features of his mind." 

How much we forgive to those who yield us the 
rare spectacle of heroic manners ! We will pai-don 



170 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

them the want of books, of arts, and even of tlie 
gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember 
them ! Here is a lesson which I brouo-ht aloncr 
with me in boyhood from the J^atin School, and 
which ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. 
Marcus Scaurus was accused by Quintus Varius 
Hispanus, that he had excited the allies to take 
arms against the Republic. But he, full of firm- 
ness and gravity, defended himself in this manner ; 
" Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges that Marcus 
Scauinis, President of the Senate, excited the allies 
to arms : Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, 
denies it. There is no witness. Which do you 
believe, Romans ? " " Utri creditis, Qidrites ? " 
When he had said these words, he was absolved 
by the assembly of the people. 

I have seen manners that make a similar impres- 
sion with personal beauty ; that give the like exhil- 
aration, and refine us like that ; and, in memorable 
experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, 
and make that superfluous and ugly. But they 
must be marked by fine perception, the acquaint- 
ance with real beauty. They must always show 
self-control : you shall not be facile, apologetic, or 
leaky, but king over your word ; and every gesture 
and action shall indicate power at rest. Then they 
must be inspired by the good heart. There is no 
beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, Hke 
the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 



BEHAVIOR. 171 

Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a niglit's 
lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good 
meaning and thought, and give courage to a com- 
panion. We must be as courteous to a man as we 
are to a picture, which we are wiUing to give the 
advantage of a good light. Special precepts are not 
to be thought of: the talent of well-doing contains 
them all. Every hour will show a duty as para- 
mount as that of my whim just now ; and yet I 
will write it, — that there is one topic peremp- 
torily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational 
mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have 
not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have head- 
ache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I 
beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, 
and not pollute the morning, to which all the 
housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by 
corruption and groans. Come out of the azure. 
Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your 
landscape. The oldest and the most deserving 
person should come very modestly into any newly 
awaked company, respecting the divine communica- 
tions, out of which all must be presumed to have 
newly come. An old man who added an elevating 
culture to a large experience of life, said to me, 
'' When you come into the room, I think I will 
study how to make humanity beautiful to you." 

As respects the delicate question of culture, I do 
not think that any other than negative rules can be 



172 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

laid do^vn. For positive rules, for suggestion, Na- 
ture alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide 
a youth, a maid, to perfect manners ? — the golden 
mean is so delicate, difficult, — say frankly, unat- 
tainable. What finest hands would not be clumsy 
to sketch the genial precepts of the young girl's 
demeanor ? The chances seem infinite against 
success ; and yet success is continually attained. 
There must not be secondariness, and 'tis a thou- 
sand to one that her air and manner will at once 
betray that she is not primary, but that there is 
some other one or many of her class, to whom she 
habitually postpones herself. But Nature lifts her 
easily, and without knowing it, over these impossi- 
bilities, and we are continually surprised with graces 
and felicities not only unteachable, but undescrib- 
able. 



VI. 
WORSHIP 



This is he, who, felled by foes, 

Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows' 

He to captivity was sold, 

But him no prison-bars would hold : 

Though they sealed him in a rock, 

Mountain chains he can unlock : 

Thrown to lions for their meat, 

The crouching lion kissed his feet: 

Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, 

But arched o'er him an honoring vault. 

This is he men miscall Fate, 

Threading dark ways, arriving late, 

But ever coming in time to crown 

The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down. 

He is the oldest, and best known. 

More near than aught thou call'st thy owa 

Yet, greeted in another's eyes. 

Disconcerts with glad surprise. 

This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, 

Floods with blessings unawares. 

Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, 

Severing rightly his from thine, 

Which is human, which divine. 



WORSHIP. 

Some of my friends have complained, when the 
preceding papers were read, that w^e discussed Fate, 
Power, and Wealth, on too low a platform ; gave 
too much line to the evil spirit of the times ; too 
manv cakes to Cerberus ; that we ran Cud worth's 
risk of making, by excess of candor, the argument 
of atheism so strong, that he could not answer it. 
I have no fears of being forced in my own despite 
to play, as we say, the devil's attorney. I have no 
infirmity of faith ; no belief that it is of much im- 
portance what I or any man may say : I am sure 
that a certain truth will be said through me, though 
I should be dumb, or though I should try to say 
the reverse. Nor do I fear skepticism for any good 
soul. A just thinker will allow full swing to his 
skepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, be- 
cause I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. 
1 have no sympathy wdth a poor man I knew, who, 
y; hen suicides abounded, told me he dared not look 
at his razor. We are of different opinions at differ- 
ent hours, but we always may be said to be at heart 
on the side of truth. 



176 CONDUCT OF LIFE 

I see not why we should give ourselves such 
sanctified airs. If the Divine Providence has hid 
fi'om men neither disease, nor deformity, nor cor- 
rupt society, but has stated itself out in passions, in 
war, in trade, in the love of power and plea?ure, 
in hunger and need, in tvi'annies, literatures, and 
arts, — let us not be so nice that we cannot write 
these facts down coarsely as they stand, or doubt 
but there is a counter-statement as ponderous, 
which we can arrive at, and which, being put, will 
make all square. The solar system has no anxiety 
about its reputation, and the credit of truth and 
honesty is as safe ; nor have I any fear that a 
skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the 
sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which 
the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh. The 
strength of that principle is not measured in ounces 
and pounds : it tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. 
We may well give skepticism as much line as we 
can. The spirit will return, and fill us. It drives 
the drivers. It counterbalances any accumulations 
of power. 

*' Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." 

We are born loyal. The whole creation is made 
of hooks and eyes, of bitumen, of sticking-plaster, 
and Avhether your community is made in Jerusalem 
or in California, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres 
in a perfect ball. Men as naturally make a state, 



WORSHIP. 177 

01 a church, as caterpillars a web. If they were 
more refined, it would be less formal, it would be 
nervous, like that of the Shakers, who, from long 
habit of thinking and feeling together, it is said, are 
affected in the same way, at the same time, to work 
and to play, and as they go with perfect sympathy 
to their tasks in the field or shop, so are they in- 
clined for a ride or a journey at the same instant, 
and the horses come up with the family carriage 
unbespoken to the door. 

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as 
a tree bears apples. A self-poise belongs to every 
particle ; and a rectitude to every mind, and is the 
Nemesis and protector of every society. I and my 
neighbors have been bred in the notion, that, unless 
we came soon to some good church, — Calvinism, 
or Behmenism, or Romanism, or Mormonism, — 
there would be a universal thaw and dissolution. 
No Isaiah or Jeremy has arrived. Nothing can 
exceed the anarchy that has followed in our skies. 
The stern old faiths have all pulverized. 'Tis a 
whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in 
search of religions. 'Tis as flat anarchy in our 
ecclesiastic realms, as that which existed in Massa- 
chusetts, in the Revolution, or which prevails now 
on the slope of the Rocky Mountains or Pike's 
Peak. Yet we make shift to live. Men are loyal. 
Nature has self-poise in all her works ; certain pro- 
portions in which oxygen and azote com])ine, and, 
8* 



178 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

not less a harmony in faculties, a fitness in the 
spring and the regulator. 

The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fen- 
elon, or Wesley, or Channing, need give us no 
uneasiness. The builder of heaven has not so ill 
constructed his creature as that the religion, that is, 
the public nature, should fall out : the public and 
the private element, like north and south, like in- 
side and outside, like centrifugal and centripetal, 
adhere to every soul, and cannot be subdued, except 
the soul is dissipated. God builds his temple in the 
heart on the ruins of churches and religions. 

In the last chapters, we treated some particulars 
of the question of culture. But the whole state 
of man is a state of culture ; and its flowering 
and completion may be described as Religion, or 
Worship. There is always some religion, some 
hoj)e and fear extended into the invisible, — from 
the blind boding which nails a horseshoe to the 
mast or the threshold, up to the song of the Elders 
in the Apocalypse. But the religion cannot rise 
above the state of the votary. Heaven alwaj3 
bears some proportion to earth. The god of the 
cannibals will be a cannibal, of the cinisaders a cru- 
sader, and of the merchants a merchant. In all 
ages, souls out of time, extraordmary, prophetic, 
are born, who are rather related to the system of 
the world, than to their particular age and locality. 
These announce absolute truths, which, with what- 



WORSHIP. 179 

ever reverence received, are speedily dragged down 
into a savage interpretation. The interior tribes 
of our Indians, and some of the Pacific islanders, 
flog their gods, when things take an unfavorable 
turn. The Greek poets did not hesitate to let loose 
their petulant wit on their deities also. Laomedon, 
in his anger at Neptune and Apollo, who had built 
Troy for him, and demanded their price, does not 
hesitate to menace them that he will cut their ears 
ofP.* Among our Norse forefathers. King Olaf's 
mode of converting Eyvind to Christianity was to 
put a pan of glowing coals on his belly, which burst 
asunder. " Wilt thou now, Eyvind, believe in 
Christ ? " asks Olaf, in excellent faith. Another 
argument was an adder put into the mouth of the 
reluctant disciple Rand, who refused to believe. 

Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified Euro- 
pean culture, — the grafted or meliorated tree in a 
crab forest. And to marry a pagan wife or hus- 
band, was to marry Beast, and voluntarily to take 
a step backwards towards the baboon. 

"Hengist had veraraent 
A daughter both fiiir and gent, 
But she was heathen Sarazine, 
And Vortigern for love fine 
Her took to fere and to wife, 
And was cursed in all his life; 
For he let Christian wed heathen, 
And mixed our blood as flesh and mathen." f 

« Iliad, Book xxi. 1. 455. t Moths or worms 



180 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed dre\fl 
from the pagan sources, Richard of Devizes's chron- 
icle of Richard I.'s ciTisade, in the twelfth century, 
may show. King Richard taunts God with for- 
sakino; him : " O fie ! O how unwillinc^ should I 
be to forsake thee, in so forlorn and dreadful a 
position, were I thy lord and advocate, as thou art 
mine. In sooth, my standards will in future be 
despised, not through my fault, but through thine ; 
in sooth, not through any cowardice of my warfare, 
art thou thyself, my king and my God conquered, 
this day, and not Richard thy vassal." The relig- 
ion of the early English poets is anomalous, so de- 
vout and so blasphemous, in the same breath. Such 
is Chaucer's extraordinary confusion of heaven and 
earth in the picture of Dido. 

" She was so fair, 
So young, so lusty, with her eyen glad, 
That if that God that heaven and earthe made 
Would have a love for heauty and goodness. 
And womanhede, truth, and seemliness, 
Whom should he loven but this lady sweet? 
There n' is no woman to him half so meet." 

With these grossnesses, we complacently com- 
pare our own taste and decorum. We think and 
speak with more temperance and gradation, — but 
is not indlfferentism as bad as superstition ? 

We live in a transition period, when the old 
faiths which comforted nations, and not only so, 
but made nations, seem to have spent their force, 



WORSHIP. 181 

I do not find the religions of men at this moment 
very creditable to them, but either childish and 
insignificant, or unmanly and effeminating. The 
fatal trait is the divorce between religion and moral- 
ity. Here are know-nothing religions, or churches 
that proscribe intellect ; scortatory religions ; slave- 
holding and slave-trading religions ; and, even in 
the decent populations, idolatries wherein the white- 
ness of the ritual covers scarlet indulgence. The 
lover of the old religion complains that our contem- 
poraries, scholars as well as merchants, succumb to 
a great despair, — have corrupted into a timorous 
conservatism, and believe in nothing. In our large 
cities, the population is godless, materialized, — no 
bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are 
not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites 
walking. How is it people manage to live on, — 
so aimless as they are ? After their peppercorn 
aims' are gained, it seems as if the lime in their 
bones alone held them together, and not any worthy 
purpose. There is no faith in the intellectual, 
none in the moral universe. There is faith in 
chemistry, in meat, and wine, in wealth, in machin- 
ery, in the steam-engine, galvanic battery, turbine- 
wheels, sewing machines, and in public opinion, but 
not in divine causes. A silent revolution has loosed 
the tension of the old religious sects, and, in place 
of the gravity and permanence of those societies 
of opinion, they run into freak and extravagance. 



182 COXDUCT OF LIFE. 

In creeds never was such levity ; witness the hea- 
thenisms in Christianity, the periodic " revivals," 
the Millennium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, 
the retrogression to Popery, the maundering of 
Mormons, the squalor of Mesmerism, the deliration 
of rappings, the rat and mouse revelation, thumps in 
table-drawers, and black art. The architecture, the 
music, the prayer, partake of the madness : the arts 
sink into shift and make-believe. Not knowing 
what to do, we ape our ancestors; the churches 
stagger backward to the mummeries of the dark 
ages. By the irresistible maturing of the general 
mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold. 
The dogma of the mystic offices of Christ being 
di'opped, and he standing on his genius as a moral 
teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old empha- 
sis of his personality ; and it recedes, as all per- 
sons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws. 
From this change, and in the momentary absence 
of any religious genius that could offset the im- 
mense material activity, there is a feeling that 
religion is gone. When Paul Leroux offered his 
article " Dieu " to the conductor of a leading 
French journal, he replied, "Xa question de Dieu 
manque d^actualitSy In Italy, Mr. Gladstone 
said of the late King of Naples, " it has been a 
prov^erb, that he has erected the negation of God 
into a system of government." In this counti-y, 
the like stupefaction was in the air, and the phrase 



WORSHIP. 183 

*' higher law " became a political jibe. What 
proof of infidelity, like the toleration and propa- 
gandism of slavery ? What, like the direction of 
education ? What, like the facility of conversion ? 
What, like the externality of churches that once 
sucked the roots of right and wrong, and now have 
perished away till they are a speck of whitewash on 
the wall ? What proof of skepticism like the base 
rate at which the highest mental and moral gifts are 
held ? Let a man attain the highest and broadest 
culture that any American has possessed, then let 
him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other 
accident, and all America will acquiesce that the 
best thing has happened to him ; that, after the 
education has gone far, such is the expensiveness 
of America, that the best use to put a fine person 
to, is, to drown him to save his board. 

Another scar of this skepticism is the distrust in 
human virtue. It is believed by well-dressed pro- 
prietors that there is no more virtue than they pos- 
sess ; that the solid portion of society exist for the 
arts of comfort : that life is an affair to put some- 
what between the upper and lower mandibles. 
How prompt the suggestion of a low motive ! 
Certain patriots in England devoted themselves 
for years to creating a public opinion that should 
break down the corn-laws and establish free trade. 
* Well,' says the man in the street, ' Cobden got 
a stipend out of it.' Kossuth fled hither across the 



184 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

ocean to try if he could rouse the New World tc 
a sympathy with European liberty. ' Aye,' says 
New York, ' he made a handsome thing of it, 
enough to make him comfortable for life.' 

See what allowance vice finds in the respect- 
able and well-conditioned class. If a pickpocket 
intrude into the society of gentlemen, they exert 
what moral force they have, and he finds himself 
uncomfortable, and glad to get away. But if an 
adventurer go through all the forms, procure him- 
self to be elected to a post of trust, as of senator, 
or president, — though by the same arts as we 
detest in the house-thief, — the same gentlemen 
who agree to discountenance the private rogue, 
will be forward to show civilities and marks of 
respect to the pubhc one ; and no amount of evi- 
dence of his crimes will prevent them giving him 
ovations, complimentary dinners, openmg their own 
houses to him, and priding themselves on his ac- 
quaintance. We were not deceived by the profes- 
sions of the private adventurer, — the louder he 
talked of his honor, the faster we counted our 
spoons ; but we appeal to the sanctified preamble 
of the messages and proclamations of the public 
sinner, as the proof of sincerity. It must be that 
they who pay this homage have said to themselves, 
On the whole, we don't know about this that you 
call honesty ; a bird in the hand is better. 

Even well-disposed, good sort of people are 



WORSHIP. 185 

touched with the same infidelity, and for brave, 
straightforward action, use half-measures and com- 
promises. Forgetful that a little measure is a 
great error, forgetful that a wise mechanic uses a 
sharp tool, they go on choosing the dead men of 
routine. But the official men can in nowise help 
you in any question of to-day, they deriving entire- 
ly from the old dead things. Only those can help 
in counsel or conduct who did not make a party 
pledge to defend this or that, but who were ap- 
pointed by God Almighty, before they came into 
the world, to stand for this which they uphold. 

It has been charged that a want of sincerity in 
the leading men is a vice general throughout Amer- 
ican society. But the multitude of the sick shall 
not make us deny the existence of health. In spite 
of our imbecility and terrors, and " universal decay 
of religion," &c. &c., the moral sense reappears to- 
day with the same morning newness that has been 
from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. 
You say, there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying 
in rainy weather, there is no sun, w^hen at that mo- 
ment we are witnessing one of his superlative effects. 
The religion of the cultivated class now, to be sure, 
consists in an avoidance of acts and engagements 
which it was once their religion to assume. But 
this avoidance will yield spontaneous forms in their 
due hour. There is a principle which is the basis 
of things, which all speech aims to say, and all 



186 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, un- 
describable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, 
our rightful lord : we are not to do, but to let do ; 
not to work, but to be worked upon ; and to this 
homage there is a consent of all thoughtful and just 
men in all a^es and conditions. To this sentiment 
belong vast and sudden enlargements of power. 
'Tis remarkable that our faith in ecstasy consists 
with total inexperience of it. It is the order of the 
world to educate with accuracy the senses and the 
understanding ; and the enginery at work to draw 
out these powers in priority, no doubt, has its office. 
But we are never without a hint that these powers 
are mediate and servile, and that we are one day 
to deal with real being, — essences with essences. 
Even the fury of material activity has some results 
friendly to moral health. The energetic action of 
the times develops individualism, and the religious 
appear isolated. I esteem this a step in the right 
direction. Heaven deals with us on no representa- 
tive system. Souls are not saved in bundles. The 
Spirit saith to the man, ' How is it with thee ? thee 
personally ? is it well ? is it ill ? ' For a great na- 
ture, it is a happiness to escape a religious training, 
— religion of character is so apt to be invaded. 
Religion must always be a crab fruit : it cannot be 
grafted and keep its wild beauty. " I have seen," 
said a traveller who had known the extremes of so- 
ciety, " I have seen human nature in all its forms, 



WORSHIP. 187 

it is everywhere the same, but the wilder it is, 
the more virtuous." 

We say, the old forms of religion decay, and that 
a skepticism devastates the community. I do not 
think it can be cured or stayed by any modification 
of theologic creeds, much less by theologic disci- 
pline. The cure for false theology is motherwit. 
Forget your books and traditions, and obey your 
moral perceptions at tliis hour. That which is sig- 
nified by the words " moral " and " spiritual," is a 
lasting essence, and, with w^hatever illusions we 
have loaded them, will certainly bring back the 
words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. 
I know no words that mean so much. In our 
definitions, we grope after the sphitual by de- 
scribing it as invisible. The true meaning of 
spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, 
which works without means, and which cannot 
be conceived as not existing. Men talk of " mere 
morality," — which is much as if one should say, 
' poor God, with nobody to help him.' I find the 
omnipresence and the almightiness in the reaction 
of every atom in Nature. I can best indicate by 
examples those reactions by which every part of 
Nature replies to the purpose of the actor, — be- 
neficently to the good, penally to the bad. Let 
us replace sentimentalism by realism, and dare to 
uncover those simple and terrible laws which, be 
tliey seen or unseen, pervade and govern. 



188 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not 
cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to 
care that he do not cheat his neighbor. Then all 
goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a 
cliariot of the smi. What a day dawns, when we 
liave taken to heart the doctrine of faith ! to prefer, 
as a better investment, being to doing; being to 
seeming ; logic to rhythm and to display ; the year 
to the day ; the life to the year ; character to per- 
formance ; — and have come to know, that justice 
will be done us ; and, if our genius is slow, the 
term will be lono;. 

'Tis certain that worship stands in some com- 
manding relation to the health of man, and to his 
highest powers, so as to be, in some manner, the 
source of intellect. All the great ages have been 
ages of belief. I mean, when there was any 
extraordhiary power of performance, when great 
national movements began, when arts appeared, 
when heroes existed, when poems were made, the 
human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its 
thoughts on spiritual verities, with as strict a grasp 
as that of the hands on the sword, or the pencil, or 
the trowel. It is true that genius takes its rise out 
of the mountains of rectitude ; that all beauty and 
power which men covet, are somehow born out of 
that Alpine district ; that any extraordinary degree 
of beauty in man or woman involves a moial 
charm. Thus, I think, we very slowly admit in 



WORSHIP. 189 

another man a higher degree of moral sentiment 
tlian our own, — a finer conscience, more impres- 
sionable, or, which marks minuter degrees ; an ear 
to hear acuter notes of right and wrong, than we 
can. I think w^e Hsten suspiciously and very slowly 
to any evidence to that point. But, once satisfied 
of such superiority, we set no limit to our expecta- 
tion of his genius. For such persons are nearer 
to the secret of God than others ; are bathed by 
sweeter waters ; they hear notices, they see visions, 
where others are vacant. We believe that holiness 
confers a certain insight, because not by our private, 
but by our public force, can we share and know the 
nature of thii:gs. 

There is an intimate interdependence of intellect 
and morals. Given the equality of two intellects, 
— which will form the most reliable judgments, 
the good, or the bad hearted ? " The heart has its 
arguments, with which the understanding is not 
acquainted." For the heart is at once aware of the 
state of health or disease, which is the controlling 
state, that is, of sanity or of insanity, prior, of 
course, to all question of the ingenuity of argu- 
ments, the amount of facts, or the elegance of 
rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance of mind and 
heart, that talent uniformly sinks with character. 
The bias of errors of principle carries away men 
into perilous courses, as soon as their will does not 
control their passion or talent. Hence the extraor- 



190 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

dinarj blunders, and final wrong head, into which 
men spoiled by ambition usually fall. Hence the 
remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, 
the cure of crime, is love. " As much love, so 
much mind," said the Latin proverb. The supe- 
riority that has no superior ; the redeemer and 
instructor of souls, as it is their primal essence, is 
love. 

The moral must be the measure of health. If 
your eye is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, 
and your opinions and actions will have a beauty 
which no learnino; or combined advantao-es of other 
men can rival. The moment of your loss of faith, 
and acceptance of the lucrative standard, will be 
marked in the pause, or solstice of genius, the se- 
quent retrogression, and the ine^dtable loss of attrac- 
tion to other minds. The vulgar are sensible of the 
change in you, and of your descent, though they 
clap you on the back, and congratulate you on your 
increased common sense. 

Our recent culture has been in natural science. 
We have learned the manners of the sun and of the 
moon, of the rivers and the rains, of the mineral 
and elemental kingdoms, of plants and animals. 
Man has learned to weigh the sun, and its weight 
neither loses nor gains. The path of a star, the 
moment of an eclipse, can be determined to the 
fraction of a second. Well, to him the book of 
History, the book of love, the lures of passion, and 



WORSHIP. 191 

the commandments of duty are opened : and the 
next lesson taught, is, the continuation of the inflex- 
ible law of matter into the subtile kingdom of will, 
and of thought ; that, if, in sidereal ages, gravity 
and projection keep their craft, and the ball never 
loses its way in its wild path through space, — a 
secreter gravitation, a secreter projection, rule not 
less tyrannically in human history, and keep the 
balance of power from age to age unbroken. For, 
though the new element of freedom and an indi- 
vidual has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms 
are prefigured and predetermined to moral issues, 
are in search of justice, and ultimate right is done. 
Religion or worship is the attitude of those who see 
this unity, intimacy, and sincerity ; who see that, 
against all appearances, the nature of things work? 
for truth and right forever. 

'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to 
those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so 
forth. Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose 
them, but push the same geometry and chemistiy 
up into the invisible plane of social and rational 
Hfe, so that, look where we will, in a boy's game, 
or in the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a per- 
petual judgment keeps watch and ward. And this 
appears in a class of facts which concerns all men, 
within and above their creeds. 

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circum- 
stances : It was somebody's name, or he happened 



192 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

to be there at the time, or, it was so then, and an- 
other aay it would have been otherwise. Strong 
men beHeve in cause and effect. The man was 
born to do it, and his father was born to be the 
father of him and of this deed, and, by looking nar- 
rowly, you shall see there was no luck in the mat- 
ter, but it was all a problem in arithmetic, or an 
•experiment in chemistry. The curve of the flight 
T»f the moth is preordained, and all things go by 
number, rule, and weight. 

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A 
man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks : as 
he deals, so he is, and so he appears ; he does not 
see, that his son is the son of his thoughts and 
of his actions ; that fortunes are not exceptions 
but fruits ; that relation and connection are not 
somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and al- 
ways ; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly, — 
but method, and an even web ; and what comes out, 
that was put in. As we are, so we do ; and as we 
do, so is it done to us ; we are the builders of our 
fortunes ; cant and lying and the attempt to secure 
a good which does not belong to us, are, once for 
all, balked and vain. But, in the human mind, this 
tie of fate is made alive. The law is the basis of 
the human mind. In us, it is inspiration ; out 
there in Nature, we see its fatal strength. We call 
it the moral sentiment. 

We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of 



WORSHIP. 193 

Law, which compares well with any m our Western 
books. " Law it is, which is without name, or 
color, or hands, or feet ; which is smallest of the 
least, and largest of the large ; all, and knowing 
all things ; which hears without ears, sees with- 
out eyes, moves without feet, and seizes without 
hands." 

If any reader tax me with using vague and tra- 
ditional phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few 
examples, what kind of a trust this is, and how real. 
Let me show him that the dice are loaded ; that the 
colors are fast, because they are the native colors 
of the fleece ; that the globe is a battery, because 
every atom is a magnet ; and that the police and 
sincerity of the Universe are secured by God's dele- 
gating his divinity to every particle ; that there is 
no room for hypocrisy, no margin for choice. 

The countryman leaving his native village, for 
the first time, and going abroad, finds all his habits 
broken up. In a new nation and language, his sect, 
as Quaker, or Lutheran, is lost. What ! it is not 
then necessary to the order and existence of so- 
ciety? He misses this, and the commanding eye 
of his neighborhood, which held him to decorum. 
Tliis is the peril of New York, of New Orleans, of 
London, of Paris, to young men. But after a little 
experience, he makes the discovery that there are 
no large cities, — none large enough to hide in ; 
that the censors of action are as numerous and as 



194 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

near in Paris, as in Littleton or Portland ; tliat the 
gossip is as prompt and vengeful. There is no con- 
cealment, and, for eacli offence, a several \ engeance ; 
that, reaction, or nothing for nothing^ or, things are 
as hvad as they are long^ is not a rule for Littleton 
or Portland, but for the Universe. 

We cannot spare the coarsest muniment of vir- 
tue. "We are disgusted by gossip ; yet it is of 
importance to keep the angels in their proprieties. 
The smallest fly will draw blood, and gossip is a 
weapon impossible to exclude from the privatest, 
highest, selectest. Nature created a police of many 
ranks. God has delegated himself to a million dep- 
uties. From these low external penalties, the scald 
ascends. Next come the resentments, the fears, 
which injustice calls out ; then, the false relations 
in Avhich the offender is put to other men ; and the 
reaction of his fault on himself, in the solitude and 
devastation of his mind. 

You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor 
his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will 
characterize itself as the effect of opium or wine. 
If you make a picture or a statue, it sets the be- 
liolder in that state of mind you had, when you 
made it. If you spend for show, on building, or 
gardening, or on pictures, or on equij^ages, it will so 
appear. We are all physiognomists and penetrators 
of character, and things themselves are detective. 
If you follow the suburban fashion in building a 



WORSHIP. 195 

sumptuous-looking house for a little money, it will 
appear to all eyes as a cheap dear house. There 
is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret 
can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a 
masked ball, where every one hides his real char- 
acter, and reveals it by hiding. If a man wish to 
conceal anything he carries, those whom he meets 
know that he conceals somewhat, and usually know 
what he conceals. Is it otherwise if there be some 
belief or some purpose he would bury in his breast ? 
'Tis as hard to hide as fire. He is a strong man 
who can hold down, his opinion. A man cannot 
utter two or three sentences, without disclosing to 
intelligent ears precisely where he stands in hfe 
and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom 
of the senses and the understanding, or, in that 
of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions 
and duty. People seem not to see that their opin- 
ion of the world is also a confession of character. 
We can only see what we are, and if we misbehave 
we suspect others. The fame of Shakspeare or of 
Voltaire, of Thomas a Kempis, or of Bonaparte, 
characterizes those who give it. As gas-light is 
found to be the best nocturnal police, so the uni- 
verse protects itself by pitiless publicity. 

Each must be armed — not necessarily with mus- 
ket and pike. Happy, if, seeing these, he can feel 
that he has better muskets and pikes in his en- 
ergy and constancy. To every creature is his owfx 



196 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

weapon, however skilfully concealed from himself, 
a good while. His work is sword and shield. 
Let him accuse none, let him injure none. The 
way to mend the had world, is to create the right 
world. Here is a low political economy plotting to 
cut the throat of foreign competition, and establish 
our own ; — excluding others by force, or making 
war on them ; or, by cunning tariffs, giving prefer- 
ence to worse wares of ours. But the real and 
(asting victories are those of peace, and not of war. 
The way to conquer the foreign artisan, is, not to 
kill him, but to beat his work. And the Crystal 
Palaces and World Fairs, with their committees 
and prizes on all kinds of industry, are the re- 
sult of this feelino;. The American workman who 
strikes ten blows with his hammer, whilst the for- 
eign workman only strikes one, is as really van- 
quishing that foreigner, as if the blows were aimed 
at and told on his person. I look on that man 
as happy, who, when there is question of success, 
looks into his work for a reply, not into the 
market, not into opinion, not into patronage. In 
every variety of human employment, in the me- 
chanical and in the fine arts, in navigation, in farm- 
mg, in legislating, there are among the numbers 
who do their task perfunctorily, as we say, or just 
to pass, and as badly as they dare, — there are the 
working-men, on whom the burden of the business 
falls, — those who love work, and love to see it 



WORSHIP. 197 

riglitly done, who finish their task for its own sake ; 
and the state and the world is happy, that has the 
most of such finishers. The world will always do 
justice at last to such finishers : it cannot otherwise. 
He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely 
the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and 
know that it will not loiter. Men talk as if vic- 
tory were something fortunate. Work is victory. 
Wherever work is done, victory is obtained. There 
is no chance, and no blanks. You want but one 
verdict : if you have your own, you are secure of 
the rest. And yet, if witnesses are wanted, wit- 
nesses are near. There was never a man born so 
wise or good, but one or more companions came 
into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, 
and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no 
man thinks alone, and no man acts alone, but the 
divine assessors who came up with him into life, 
— now under one disguise, now under another, — 
like a police in citizens' clothes, walk with him, 
step for step, through all the kingdom of time. 

This reaction, this sincerity is the property of all 
things. To make our word or act subhme, we 
must make it real. It is our system that counts, 
not the single word or unsupported action. Use 
what language you will, you can never say any- 
thing but what you are. What I am, and what I 
think, is conveyed to you, in spite of my efforts to 
hold it back. What I am has been secretly con- 



198 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

veyed from me to another, whilst I was vainly 
making up my mind to tell him it. He has heard 
from me what I never spoke. 

As men get on in life, they acquh'e a love for 
sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled 
or amused. In the progress of the character, there 
is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and 
a decreasing faith in propositions. Young people 
admire talents, and particular excellences. As we 
grow older, we value total powers and effects, as 
the spirit, or quality of the man. We have another 
sight, and a new standard ; an insight which disre- 
gards what is done for the eye, and pierces to the 
doer ; an ear which hears not what men say, but 
hears what they do not say. 

There was a wise, devout man who is called, in 
the Catholic Church, St. Philip Neri, of whom 
many anecdotes toucliing his discernment and be- 
nevolence are told at Naples and Rome. Among 
the nuns in a convent not far from Rome, one had 
appeared, who laid claim to certain rare gifts of 
inspiration and prophecy, and the abbess advised 
the Holy Father, at Rome, of the wonderful powers 
shown by her novice. The Pope did not well know 
what to make of these new claims, and Philip com- 
ing in from a journey, one day, he consulted him. 
Philip undertook to visit the nun, and ascertain 
her character. He threw himself on his mule, all 
travel-soiled as he was, and hastened through the 



WORSHIP. 199 

mad and mire to the distant convent. He told the 
abbess the wishes of his Holiness, and begged her 
to summon the nun without delay. The nun was 
sent for, and, as soon as she came into the apart- 
ment, PhiHp stretched out his leg all bespattered 
witli mud, and desired her to draw off his boots. 
The young nun, who had become the object of much 
attention and respect, drew back with anger, and re- 
vised the office : Philip ran out of doors, mounted his 
mule, and returned instantly to the Pope ; " Give 
yourself no uneasiness, Holy Father, any longer : 
here is no miracle, for here is no humility." 

We need not much mind what people please to 
say, but what they must say ; what their natures 
say, though their busy, artful, Yankee understand- 
ings try to hold back, and choke that word, and 
to articulate something different. If we will sit 
quietly, — what they ought to say is said, with their 
will, or against their will. We do not care for 
you, let us pretend what we will : — we are always 
looking through you to the dim dictator behind 
you. Whilst your habit or whim chatters, we 
civilly and impatiently wait until that wise supe- 
rior shall speak again. Even children are not 
deceived by the false reasons which their parents 
give in answer to their questions, whether touch- 
ing natural facts, or religion, or persons. When 
the parent, instead of thinking how it really is, 
[-ai'.s thL'in off with a traditional or a hypocritical 



200 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

answer, the children perceive that it is ti-aditional 
or hypocritical. To a sound constitution the defect 
of another is at once manifest : and the marks of it 
are only concealed from us by our own dislocation. 
An anatomical observer remarks, that the sympa- 
thies of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis, tell at last 
on the face, and on all its features. Not only does 
our beauty waste, but it leaves word how it went to 
waste. Physiognomy and phrenology are not new 
sciences, but declarations of the soul that it is aware 
of certain new sources of information. And now 
sciences of broader scope are starting up behind 
these. And so for ourselves, it is really of little 
importance what blunders in statement we make, 
so only we make no wilful departures from the 
truth. How a man's truth comes to mind, long 
after we have forgotten all his words ! How 
it comes to us in silent hours, that truth is our 
only armor in all passages of life and death ! Wit 
is cheap, and anger is cheap ; but if you cannot 
argue or explain yom'self to the other party, cleave 
to the truth against me, against thee, and you gain 
a station from which you cannot be dislodged. The 
other party will forget the words that you spoke, 
but the part you took continues to plead for you. 
Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which 
life offers me ? I am well assured that the Ques- 
tioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring 
the answers also in due time. Very rich, very po* 



WORSHIP. 201 

tent, very cheerful Giver that he is, he shall have it 
all his own way, for me. Why should I give up 
my thought, because I cannot answer an objection 
to it ? Consider only, whether it remains in my 
life the same it was. That only which we have 
within, can we see without. If we meet no gods, 
it is because we harbor none. If there is gran- 
deur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and 
sweeps. He only is rightly immortal, to whom all 
things are immortal. I have read somewhere, that 
none is accomplished, so long as any are incom- 
plete ; that the happiness of one cannot consist with 
the misery of any other. 

The Buddhists say, " No seed will die : " every 
seed will grow. Where is the service which can 
escape its remuneration ? What is vulgar, and the 
essence of all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward ? 
'Tis the difference of artisan and artist, of talent 
and genius, of sinner and saint. The man whose 
eyes are nailed not on the nature of his act, but on 
the wages, whether it be money, or office, or fame, 
— is almost equally low. He is great, whose eyes 
are opened to see that the reward of actions cannot 
be escaped, because he is transformed into his ac- 
tion, and taketh its nature, which bears its own 
fi'uit, like every other tree. A great man cannot 
be hindered of the effect of his act, because it is 
immediate. The genius of life is friendly to the 

'aoble, and in the dark brings them friends from far. 
9* 



202 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

Fear God, and where you go, men shall think they 
walk in hallowed cathedrals. 

And so I look on those sentiments which makt; 
the glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, 
as being also the intimacy of Divinity in the atoms ; 
and, that, as soon as the man is right, assurances 
and previsions emanate from the interior of his 
body and his mind ; as, when flowers reach their 
ripeness, incense exhales from them, and, as a 
beautiful atmosphere is generated from the planet 
by the averaged emanations from all its rocks and 
soils. 

Thus man is made equal to every event. He 
can face danger for the right. A poor, tender, 
painful body, he can run into flame or bullets or 
pestilence, with duty for his guide. He feels the 
insurance of a just employment. I am not afraid 
of accident, as long as I am in my place. It is 
strange that superior persons should not feel that 
they have some better resistance against cholera, 
than avoiding green peas and salads. Life is hardly 
respectable, — is it ? if it has no generous, guaran- 
teeing task, no duties or affections, that constitute 
a necessity of existing. Every man's task is his life- 
preserver. The conviction that his work is dear 
to God and cannot be spared, defends him. The 
Iioi;htnino;-rod that disarms the cloud of its threat 
is his body in its duty. A high aim reacts on 
he means, on the days, on the organs of the 



WORSHIP. 20S 

Dody. A liigli aim is curative, as well as arnica. 
" Napoleon," says Goetlie, " visited those sick of 
tlie plague, in order to prove that the man who 
could vanquish fear, could vanquish the plague 
also ; and he was right. 'Tis incredible what 
force the will has in such cases : it penetrates the 
body, and puts it in a state of activity, which 
rej^els all hurtful influences ; whilst fear invites 
them." 

It is related of William of Orange, that, whilst 
he was besieging a town on the continent, a gen- 
tleman sent to him on public business came to his 
camp, and, learning that the King was before the 
walls, he ventui'ed to go where he was. He found 
him directing the operation of his gunners, and, 
having explained his errand, and received his an- 
swer, the King said, " Do you not know, sir, that 
every moment you spend here is at the risk of your 
life ? " "I run no more risk," replied the gentle- 
man, '' than your Majesty." " Yes," said the 
King, " but my duty brings me here, and yours 
does not." In a few minutes, a cannon-ball fell 
on the spot, and the gentleman was killed. 

Thus can the faithful student reverse all the 
warnings of his early instinct, under the guidance 
of a deeper instinct. He learns to welcome mis- 
fortune, learns that adversity is the prosperity of 
the great. He learns the greatness of humility. 
He shall work in the dark, work against failm'e, 



204 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

pain, and ill-will. If he is insulted, he can be 
insulted ; all his affair is not to insult. Hafiz 
writes, 

At the last day, men shall wear 
On their heads the dust, 
As ensign and as ornament 
Of their lowly trust. 

The moral equalizes all ; enriches, empowers all. 
It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in 
their pocket. Under the whip of the driver, the 
slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes. 
In the greatest destitution and calamity, it surprises 
man with a feeling of elasticity wliich makes noth- 
ing of loss. 

I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose 
life and discourse betrayed many inspirations of this 
sentiment. Benedict was always great in the pres- 
ent time. He had hoarded nothing from the past, 
neither in his cabinets, neither in his memory. He 
had no desicnis on the future, neither for what he 
should do to men, nor for what men should do for 
him. He said, ' I am never beaten until I know 
that I am beaten. I meet powerful brutal people 
to whom I have no skill to reply. They think they 
have defeated me. It is so published in society, in 
the journals ; I am defeated in this fashion, in all 
men's siglit, perhaps on a dozen different lines. jMy 
leger may show that I am in debt, cannot yet make 
my ends meet, and ^-anquish the enemy so. My 



WORSHIP. 205 

race may not be prospering : we are sick, ugly^ 
obscure, unpopular. My children may be worsted. 
I seem to fail in my fi'iends and clients, too. That 
is to say, in all the encounters that have yet 
chanced, I have not been weaponed for that par- 
ticular occasion, and have been historically beaten ; 
and yet, I know, all the time, that I have never 
been beaten ; have never yet fought, shall certainly 
fight, when my hour comes, and shall beat.' " A 
man," says the Vishnu Sarma, " who having well 
compared his own strength or wealaiess with that 
of others, after all doth not know the difference, is 
easily overcome by his enemies." 

' I spent,' he said, ' ten months in the coun- 
try. Thick-starred Orion was my only companion. 
Wherever a squirrel or a bee can go with security, 
I can go. I ate whatever was set before me ; I 
touched ivy and dogwood. When I went abroad, 
I kept company wath every man on the road, for I 
knew that my evil and my good did not come from 
these, but from the Spirit, whose servant I was. 
For I could not stoop to be a circumstance, as they 
did, who put their life into their fortune and their 
company. I would not degrade myself by casting 
about in my memory for a thought, nor by waiting 
for one. If the thought come, I would give it 
entertainment. It should, as it ought, go into my 
bands and feet ; but if it come not spontaneously, it 
comes not rightly at all. If it can spare me, I am 



20G CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

sure I can spare it. It shall be the same with my 
friends. I will never woo the lovehest. I will not 
ask any friendship or favor. When I come to my 
own, we shall both know it. Nothing will be to be 
asked or to be granted.' Benedict went out to seek 
his friend, and met him on the way ; but he ex- 
pressed no surprise at any coincidences. On the 
other hand, if he called at the door of his friend, 
and he was not at home, he did not go again ; 
concluding that he had misinterpreted the intima- 
tions. 

He had the whim not to make an apology to 
the same individual whom he had wronged. For 
this, he said, was a piece of personal vanity ; 
but he would correct his conduct in that respect 
in which he had faulted, to the next person he 
should meet. Thus, he said, universal justice was 
satisfied. 

Mira came to ask what she should do w^ith the 
poor Genesee woman who had hired herself to work 
for her, at a shilling a day, and, now sickening, was 
like to be bedridden on her hands. Should she 
keep her, or should she dismiss her ? But Benedict 
said, ' Why ask ? One thing will clear itself as the 
thing t3 be done, and not another, when the hour 
comes. Is it a question, wdiether to put her inro 
the street? Just as much whether to thrust the 
little Jenny on your arm into the street. The 
milk and meal you give the beggar, will fatten 



WORSHIP. 207 

Jenny. Thrust the woman out, and you thrust 
your babe out of doors, whether it so seem to you 
or not.' 

In the Sliakers, so called, I find one piece of be- 
lief, in the doctrine which they faithfully hold, that 
encourages them to open their doors to every way- 
faring man who proposes to come among them ; for, 
they say, the Spirit will presently manifest to the 
man himself, and to the society, what manner of 
person he is, and whether he belongs among them. 
They do not receive him, they do not reject him. 
And not in vain have they worn their clay coat, 
and drudged in their fields, and shuffled in their 
Bruin dance, fi:om year to year, if they have truly 
learned thus much wisdom. 

Honor him whose life is perpetual victory ; him, 
who, by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds 
support in labor, instead of praise ; who does not 
shine, and would rather not. With eyes open, he 
makes the choice of virtue, which outrages the vir- 
tuous ; of religion, which churches stop their dis- 
cords to burn and exterminate ; for the highest 
virtue is always against the law. 

Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the 
arithmetician. Talent and success interest me but 
moderately. The great class, they who affect our 
imagination, the men who could not make their 
hands meet around their objects, the rapt, the 
lost, the fools of ideas, — they suggest what they 



208 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

cannot execute. They speak to the ages, and 
are • hear(? from afar. The Spirit does not love 
cripples and malformations. If there ever was a 
good man, be certain, there was another, and will 
be more. 

Anl so in relation to that future hour, that spec- 
tre clothed with beauty at our curtain by night, at 
our table by day, — the apprehension, the assur- 
ance of a coming change. The race of mankind 
have always offered at least this implied thanks for 
the gift of existence, — namely, the terror of its 
being taken away ; the insatiable curiosity and ap- 
petite for its continuation. The whole revelation 
that is vouchsafed us, is, the gentle trust, which, in 
our experience we find, will cover also with flowers 
the slopes of this chasm. 

Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is 
incurious. It is so well, that it is sure it will be 
well. It asks no questions of the Supreme Power. 
The son of Antiochus asked his father, when he 
would join battle ? "Dost thou fear," replied the 
King, " that thou only in all the army wilt not hear 
the trumpet ?" 'Tis a higher thing to confide, that, 
if it is best we should live, we shall live, — 'tis 
higher to have this conviction, than to have the 
lease of indefinite centuries and millenniums and 
aions. Higher than the question of our duration is 
the question of our deserving. Immortality Avill 
come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be 



WORSHIP. 20^ 

a great soul in future, must be a great soul now. 
It is a doctrine too great to rest on any legend, that 
is, on any man's experience but our own. It must 
be proved, if at all, from our own activity and de- 
signs, which imply an interminable future for their 
play. 

What is called religion effeminates and demoral- 
izes. Such as you are, the gods themselves could 
not help you. Men are too often unfit to live, from 
their obvious inequality to their own necessities, or, 
they suffer from politics, or bad neighbors, or from 
sickness, and they would gladly know that they 
were to be dismissed from the duties of life. But 
the wise instinct asks, ' How will death help them ? ' 
These are not dismissed when they die. You shall 
not wish for death out of pusillanimity. The weight 
of the Universe is pressed down on the shoulders of 
each moral agent to hold him to his task. The 
only path of escape known in all the worlds of God 
is performance. You must do your work, before 
you shall be released. And as far as it is a ques- 
tion of fact respecting the government of the Uni- 
verse, Marcus Antoninus summed the whole in a 
word, " It is pleasant to die, if there be gods ; and 
sad to live, if there be none." 

And so I think that the last lesson of life, the 
choral song which rises from all elements and all 
angels, is, a voluntary obedience, a necessitated free- 
dom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world 



210 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

is, lie shares the same impressions, predispositions, 
and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when 
his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into 
the sublime order, and does, wdth knowledge, what 
the stones do by structure. 

The religion which is to guide and fxilfil the pres- 
ent and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be 
intellectual. The scientific mind must have a faith 
which is science. " There are two thino;s," said 
Mahomet, " which I abhor, the learned in his infi- 
delities, and the fool in his devotions." Our times 
are impatient of both, and specially of the last. 
Let us have nothing now which is not its own evi- 
dence. There is surely enough for the heart and 
imagination in the religion itself. Let us not be 
pestered with assertions and half-truths, with emo- 
tions and snuffle. 

There will be a new church founded on moral 
science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger 
again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law, 
the church of men to come, without shawms, or 
psaltery, or sackbut ; but it will have heaven and 
earth for its beams and rafters ; science for symbol 
and illustration ; it will fast enough gather beauty, 
music, picture, poetry. AYas never stoicism so 
stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send 
man home to his central solitude, shame these social, 
supplicating manners, and make him know that 
much of the time he must have himself to his 



I 



WORSHIP. 211 

friend. He shall expect no cooperation, lie shall 
walk with no companion. The nameless Thought, 
the nameless Power, the superpersonal Heart, — he 
shall repose alone on that. He needs only his own 
verdict. No good fame can help, no bad fame can 
hurt him. The Laws are his consolers, the good 
Laws themselves are alive, they know if he have 
kept them, they animate him with the leading of 
great duty, and an endless horizon. Honor and 
fortune exist to him who always recognizes the 
neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in 
the presence of high causes. 



VII. 

CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 



Hear what British Merlin sung, 

Of keenest eye and truest tongue. 

Say not, the chiefs who first arrive 

Usurp the seats for which all strive; 

The forefathers this land who found 

Failed to plant the vantage-ground ; 

Ever from one who comes to-morrow 

Men wait their good and truth to borrow. 

But wilt thou measure all thy road, 

See thou lift the lightest load. 

Who has little, to him who has less, can spare, 

And thou, Cyndyllan's son ! beware 

Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear, 

To falter ere thou thy task fulfil, — 

Only the light-armed climb the hill. 

The richest of all lords is Use, 

And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. 

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, 

Drink the wild air's salubrity : 

Where the star Canope shines in May, 

Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. 

The music that can deepest reach, 

And cure all ill, is cordial speech: 

Mask thy wisdom with delight, 

Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 



214 CONDUCT OF LIFjb. 

Of all wit's uses, the main one 
Is to live well with who has none. 
Cleave to thine acre ; the round year 
Will fetch all fruits and virtues here* 
Fool and foe may harmless roam, 
Loved and lovers bide at home. 
A day for toil, an hour for sport, 
But for a friend is life too short 



f 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 

Although this garrulity of advising is bom with 
us, I confess that Hfe is rather a subject of wonder, 
than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresist- 
ible dictation from temperament and unknown in- 
spiration enters into it, that we doubt we can say 
anything out of our own experience whereby to 
help each other. All the professions are timid 
and expectant agencies. The priest is glad if his 
prayers or his sermon meet the condition of any 
soul ; if of two, if of ten, 'tis a signal success. But 
he walked to the church without any assurance 
that he knew the distemper, or could heal it. The 
physician prescribes hesitatingly out of his few re- 
sources, the same tonic or sedative to this new and 
peculiar constitution, which he has applied Avith 
various success to a hundred men before. If the 
patient mends, he is glad and surprised. The law- 
yer advises the client, and tells his story to the jury, 
and leaves it with them, and is as gay and as much 
relieved as the client, if it turns out that he has 
a verdict. The judge weighs the arguments, and 
puts a brave face on the matter, and, since there 



216 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

must be a decision, decides as lie can, and hopes he 
has done justice, and given satisfaction to the com- 
munity ; but is only an advocate after all. And 
so is all life a timid and unskilful spectator. We 
do what we must, and call it by the best names. 
"We like very well to be praised for our action, 
but our conscience says, " Not unto us." 'Tis 
little we can do for each other. We accompany 
the youth with sympathy, and manifold old sayings 
of the wise, to the gate of the arena, but 'tis cer- 
tain that not by strength of ours, or of the old say- 
ings, but only on strength of his own, unknown to 
QS or to any, he must stand or fall. That by which 
a man conquers in any passage, is a profound secret 
to every other being in the world, and it is only as 
he turns his back on us and on all men, and draws 
on this most private wisdom, that any good can 
come to him. What we have, therefore, to say of 
life, is rather description, or, if you piease, cele- 
bration, than available rules. 

Yet vicror is contagious, and whatever makes us 
either think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and 
enlarges our field of action. We have a debt to 
every great heart, to every fine genius ; to those 
who have put life and fortune on the cast of an act 
of justice ; to those who have added new sciences ; 
to those who have refined life by elegant pm'suits. 
'Tis the fine souls who serve us, and not what is 
called fine society. Fine society is only a self- 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 217 

protection against the vulgarities of the street and 
the tavern. Fine society, in the common accepta- 
tion, has neither ideas nor aims. It rendeis the 
service of a perfumery, or a laundry, not of a 
farm or factory. 'Tis an exclusion and a precinct. 
Sidney Smith said, " A few yards in London ce- 
jnent or dissolve friendship." It is an unprincipled 
decorum ; an affair of clean linen and coaches, of 
gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. There are 
other measures of self-respect for a man, than the 
number of clean shirts he puts on every day. So- 
ciety wishes to be amused. I do not wish to be 
amused. I wish that life should not be cheap, but 
sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, 
fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by 
some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are 
to pay, or some pleasure we are to taste. Is all we 
have to do to draw the breath in, and blow it out 
again ? Porphyry's definition is better ; " Life is 
that which holds matter together." The babe in 
arms is a channel through which the energies we 
call fate, love, and reason, visibly stream. See 
what a cometary train of auxiliaries man carries 
with him, of animals, plants, stones, gases, and im- 
ponderable elements. Let us infer his ends from 
this pomp of means. Mirabeau said, " Why should 
we feel ourselves to be men, unless it be to succeed 
in everything, everywhere. You must say of noth- 
mg. That is beneath me, nor feel that anything can 

10 



218 CONDUCT OF LIFL. 

be out of your ]^ower. Nothing Is impossible to 
the man avIio can will. Is that necessary? Tliat 
shall he: — this is the only law of success." "Who- 
ever said it, this is in the right key. But this is 
not the tone and genius of the men in the street. 
In the streets, w^e grow cynical. The men we 
meet are coarse and torpid. The finest wits 
Jiave their sediment. What quantities of fribbles, 
paupers, invalids, epicures, antiquaries, politicians, 
thieves, and triflers of both sexes, might be ad^an- 
tageously spared ! Mankind divides itself into two 
classes, — benefactors and malefactors. The second 
class is vast, the first a handful. A j^erson seldom 
falls sick, but the bystanders are animated with a 
faint hope that he w^ill die : — quantities of poor 
lives ; of distressing invalids ; of cases for a gun. 
Franklin said, " Mankind are very superficial and 
dastardly : they begin upon a thing, but, meeting 
with a difficulty, they fly from it discouraged : but 
they have capacities, if they would employ them." 
Shall we then judge a country by the majority, 
or by the minority ? By the minority, sm'ely. 
'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or 
by square miles of land, or other than by their im- 
portance to the mind of the time- 
Leave this hy[30critical prating about the masses. 
Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their 
demands and influence, and need not to be flattered 
but to be schooled. I \vish not to concede any- 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 219 

tning to them, but to tame, drill, di ride, and break 
them up, and draw individuals out of them. The 
worst of charity is, that the lives you are asked to 
preserve are not worth preserving. Masses ! the 
calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass 
at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accom- 
plished women only, and no shovel-handed, nar- 
row-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or 
lazzaroni at all. If government knew how, I 
should like to see it check, not multiply the pop- 
ulation. When it reaches its true law of action, 
everv man that is born will be hailed as essential. 
Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have 
the considerate vote of single men spoken on their 
honor and their conscience. In old Egypt, it was 
established law, that the vote of a prophet be reck- 
oned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was 
much under-estimated. " Clay and clay differ in 
dignity," as we discover by our preferences every 
day. What a vicious practice is this of our poli- 
ticians at Washington pairing off! as if one man 
who votes wrong, going away, could excuse you, 
who mean to vote right, for going away ; or, as 
if your presence did not tell in more ways than 
in your vote. Suppose the three hundred he- 
roes at Thermopylae had paired off with three 
hundred Persians : would it have been all the 
same to Greece, and to history ? Napoleon was 
called by his men Cent Mille. Add honesty to 



220 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

him, and tliej might liave called him Hundred 
Million. 

Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that 
is good, and shakes down a tree full of gnarled, 
wormy, unripe crabs, before you can find a dozen 
dessert apples ; and she scatters nations of naked 
Indians, and nations of clothed Christians, with two 
or three good heads among them. Nature works 
very hard, and only hits the white once in a million 
throws. In mankind, she is contented if she yields 
one master in a century. The more difficulty there 
is in creating good men, the more they are used 
when they come. I once counted in a little neigh- 
borhood, and found that every able-bodied man 
had, say from twelve to fifteen persons dependent 
on him for material aid, — to whom he is to be for 
spoon and jug, for backer and sponsor, for nurserj^ 
and hospital, and many functions beside : nor does 
it seem to make much difference whether he is 
bachelor or patriarch ; if he do not violently decline 
the duties that fall to him, this amount of helpful- 
ness will in one way or another be brought home to 
him. This is the tax which his abilities pay. The 
good men are employed for private centres of use, 
and for larger influence. All revelations, whether 
of mechanical or intellectual or moral science, are 
made not to communities, but to single persons. 
All the marked events of our day, all the cities, all 
the colonizations, may be traced back to their origin 



I 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 221 

m a private brain. All the feats which make oui 
civility were the thoughts of a few good heads. 

Meantime, this spa^vning productivity is not nox- 
ious or needless. You w^ould say, this rabble of 
nations might be spared. But no, they are all 
counted and depended on. Fate keeps everything 
alive so long as the smallest thread of public 
necessity holds it on to the tree. The coxcomb 
and bully and thief class are allowed as proletaries, 
every one of their vices being the excess or acridity 
of a virtue. The mass are animal, in pupilage, and 
near chimpanzee. But the units, whereof this mass 
is composed are neuters, every one of which may 
be grown to a queen-bee. The rule is, we are 
used as brute atoms, until we think : then, we 
use all the rest. Nature turns all malfaisance to 
good. Nature provided for real needs. No sane 
man at last distrusts himself. His existence is a 
perfect answer to all sentimental cavils. If he is, 
he is wanted, and has the precise properties that 
are required. That we are here, is proof we ought 
to be here. We have as good right, and the same 
sort of right to be here, as Cape Cod or Sandy 
Hook have to be there. 

To say then, the majority are wicked, means no 
malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simplj-, 
that the majority are unripe, and have not yet 
come to themselves, do not yet know their opinion. 
That^ if they knew it, Is an oracle for them and for 



222 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

all. But in the passing moment, the quadruped in- 
terest is very prone to prevail : and this beast-force, 
whilst it makes the discipline of the world, the 
school of heroes, the glory of martyrs, has pro- 
voked, in every age, the satire of wits, and the tears 
of good men. They find the journals, the clubs, the 
governments, the churches, to be in the interest, and 
the pay of the devil. And wise men have met this 
obstruction in their times, like Socrates, with his 
famous irony ; like Bacon, with life-long dissimula- 
tion ; like Erasmus, with his book " The Praise of 
Folly ; " like Rabelais, with his sath'e rending tlie 
nations. " They were the fools who cried against 
me, you will say," wrote the Chevalier de Boufflers 
to Grimm ; " aye, but the fools have the advantage 
of numbers, and 'tis that which decides. 'Tis of 
no use for us to make war with them ; we shall not 
weaken them ; they will always be the masters. 
There will not be a practice or an usage introduced, 
of which they are not the authors." 

In front of these sinister factJ, the first lesson of 
history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, 
but Bad is sometimes a better. 'Tis the oppres- 
sions of William the Norman, savage forest-laws, 
and crushing despotism, that made possible the in- 
spirations of 3Iagna Cliarta under John. Edward I. 
wanted money, armies, castles, and as much as he 
could get. It was necessary to call the people to- 
gether by shorter, swifter ways, — and the House 



COXSIDEKATIOXS BY THE WAY. 223 

of Commons arose. To obtain subsidies, he paia 
in privileges. In the t\venty-fourth year ot* his 
reign, he decreed, " that no tax should be lev- 
ied without consent of Lords and Commons;" — 
which is the basis of the English Constitution. 
Plutarch affirms that the cruel wars which fol- 
lowed the march of Alexander, introduced the 
civility, language, and arts of Greece into the 
savage East ; introduced marriage ; built seventy 
cities ; and united hostile nations under one gov- 
ernment. The barbarians wdio broke up the 
Roman empire did not arrive a day too soon. 
Schiller says, the Thirty Years' War made Ger- 
many a nation. Rough, selfish despots serve men 
immensely, as Henry VIII. in the contest with the 
Pope ; as the infatuations no less than the wisdom 
of Cromwell ; as the ferocity of the Russian czars ; 
as the fanaticism of the French regicides of 1789. 
The frost which kills the harvest of a year, saves 
the harvests of a century, by destroying the weevil 
or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break up im- 
movable routine, clear the ground of rotten races 
and dens of distemper, and open a fair field ta 
new men. There is a tendency in things to right 
themselves, and the war or revolution or bank- 
rjptcy that shatters a rotten system, allows things 
to take a new and natural order. The sharpest 
evils are bent into that periodicity which makes the 
errors of planets, and the fevers and distempers 



224 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

of men, self-limiting. Nature is upheld by antag* 
onism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. 
We acquire the strength we have overcome. With- 
out war, no soldier ; without enemies, no hero. 
The sun were insipid, if the universe were not 
opaque. And the glory of character is in affront- 
ing .the horrors of depravity, to draw thence new 
nobilities of power : as Art lives and thrills in 
new use and combining of contrasts, and mining 
into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night. 
What would painter do, or what would poet or 
saint, but for crucifixions and hells ? And evei- 
more in the world is this marvellous balance of 
beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats. Not 
Antoninus, but a poor washer-wonian said, " The 
more trouble, the more Hon ; that's my principle." 
I do not think very respectfully of the designs or 
the doings of the people who went to California, in 
1849. It was a rush and a scramble of needy ad- 
venturers, and, in the western country, a general 
jail-delivery of all the rowdies of the rivers. Some 
of them went with honest purposes, some with very 
bad ones, and all of them with the very common- 
place wish to find a short way to wealth. But 
Nature watches over all, and turns this malfaisance 
to good. California gets peopled and subdued, — 
civilized in this immoral way, — and, on this fiction, 
a real prosperity is rooted and grown. 'Tis a de- 
coy-duck ; 'tis tubs thrown to amuse the whale : 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 225 

but real ducks, and whales that yield oil, are 
caught. And, out of Sabine rapes, and out of 
robbers' forays, real Romes and their heroisms 
come in fulness of time. 

In America, the geography is sublime, but the 
men are not : the inventions are excellent, but the 
inventors one is sometimes ashamed of. The aoen- 
cies by which events so grand as the opening of 
California, of Texas, of Oregon, and the junction 
of the two oceans, are effected, are paltry, — coarse 
selfishness, fraud, and conspiracy : and most of the 
great results of history are brought about by dis- 
creditable means. 

The benefaction derived in Illinois, and the great 
West, from railroads is inestimable, and vastly ex- 
ceeding any intentional philanthropy on record. 
What is the benefit done by a good King Alfred, 
or by a Howard, or Pestalozzi, or Elizabeth Fry, 
or Florence Nightingale, or any lover, less or 
larger, compared with the involuntary blessing 
wrought on nations by the selfish capitalists who 
built the Illinois, Michigan, and the network of the 
Mississippi valley roads, which have evoked not 
only all the wealth of the soil, but the energy of 
millions of men. 'Tis a sentence of ancient wis- 
dom, " that God hangs the greatest weights on the 
smallest wires." 

What happens thus to nations, befalls every day 
in private houses. When the friends of a gentU 

10* 



226 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

man brought to his notice the follies of liis sons, 
with many hints of their danger, he replied, that he 
knew so much mischief when he was a boy, and 
had turned out on the whole so successfully, tliat 
he was not alarmed by the dissipation of boys ; 
'twas dangerous water, but, he thought, they would 
soon touch bottom, and then swim to the icp. 
This is bold practice, and there are many failures 
to a good escape. Yet one would say, that a 
good understanding would suffice as well as moral 
sensibility to keep one erect ; the gratifications of 
the passions are so quickly seen to be damaging, 
and, — what men like least, — seriously lowering 
them in social rank. Then all talent sinks with 
character. 

" Croyez moi, Verreuj' aussi a so7i mei^ite^^'' said 
Voltaire. We see those who surmount, by dint of 
some egotism or infatuation, obstacles from which 
the prudent recoil. The right partisan is a heady 
narrow man, who, because he does not see many 
things, sees some one thing with heat and exaggera- 
tion, and, if he falls among other narrow men, or 
on objects which have a brief importance, as some 
trade or politics of the hour, he prefers it to the 
universe, and seems inspired, and a godsend to 
those who wish to magnify the matter, and carry 
a point. Better, certainly, if we could secure the 
strength and fire which rude, passionate men bring 
into society, quite clear of their vices. But who 



CONSTDERATIOXS BY THE WAY. 227 

dares draw out the linchpin from the wagon- 
wheel ? 'Tis so manifest, that there is no moral 
deformitj, but is a good passion out of place ; 
that there is no man who is not indebted to his 
foibles ; that, according to the old oracle, " the 
Furies are the bonds of men ; " that the poisons 
are our principal medicines, which kill the dis- 
ease, and save the life. In the high prophetic 
j)hrase, He causes the ivrath of man to. praise Jiim, 
ind twists and wrenches our evil to our good. 
Shakspeare wrote, — 

'"Tis said, best men are moulded of their faults;" 

and great educators and lawgivers, and especially 
generals, and leaders of colonies, mainly rely on 
this stuff, and esteem men of irregular and pas- 
sional force the best timber. A man of sense and 
energy, the late head of the Farm School in Boston 
harbor, said to me, " I want none of yom' good 
boys, — give me the bad ones." And this is the 
reason, I suppose, why, as soon as the children are 
good, the mothers are scared, and think they are 
going to die. Mirabeau said, " There are none but 
men of strong passions capable of going to great- 
:iess ; none but such capable of meriting the public 
gratitude." Passion, though a bad regulator, is a 
powei-ful spring. Any absorbing passion has the 
effect to deliver from the little coils and cares of 
every day : 'tis the heat which sets our human 



228 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of crossing 
thresholds, and first addresses in society, and gives 
us a good start and speed, easy to continue, when 
once it is begun. In short, there is no man who 
is not at some time indebted to his vices, as no 
plant that is not fed from manures. We only 
insist that the man meliorate, and that the plant 
grow upward, and convert the base into the better 
nature. 

The wise workman will not regret the poverty or 
the solitude which brought out his workincr talents. 
The youth is charmed with the fine air and accom- 
plishments of the children of fortune. But all great 
men come out of the middle classes. 'Tis bettei 
for the head ; 'tis better for the heart. Marcus 
Antoninus says, that Fronto told him, " that the so- 
called high-born are for the most part heartless ; " 
whilst nothing is so indicative of deepest culture as 
a tender consideration of the ignorant. Charles 
James Fox said of England, " The history of this 
country proves, that we are not to expect from men 
in affluent circumstances the \ngilance, energy, and 
exertion without which the House of Commons 
would lose its greatest force and weight. Human 
nature is prone to indulgence, and the most merito- 
rious public services have always been performed 
by persons in a condition of life removed from opu- 
lence." And yet what we ask daily, is to be con- 
ventional. Supply, most kind gods ! this defect in 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THl. WAY. 229 

my address, in my form, in my fortunes, which puts 
me a little out of the ring : supply it, and let me be 
like the rest whom I admire, and on good terms 
with them. But the wise gods say, No, we have 
better things for thee. By humiliations, by defeats, 
by loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, learn a 
wider truth and humanity than that of a fine gen- 
tleman. A Fifth- A venue landlord, a West-End 
householder, is not the highest style of man : and, 
though good hearts and sound minds are of no con- 
dition, yet he who is to be wise for many, must not 
be protected. He must know the huts where poor 
men lie, and the chores which poor men do. The 
first-class minds, JEsop, Socrates, Cervantes, Shak- 
speare, Franklin, had the poor man's feeling and 
mortification. A rich man was never insulted in 
liis life : but this man must be stung. A rich man 
was never in danger from cold, or hunger, or war, 
or rufiians, and you can see he was not, from the 
moderation of his ideas. 'Tis a fatal disadvantage 
to be cockered, and to eat too much cake. What 
tests of manhood could he stand ? Take him out of 
his protections. He is a good book-keeper; or he is 
a shrewd adviser in the insurance office : perhaps 
he could pass a college examination, and take his 
degrees : perhaps he can give wise counsel in a 
court of law. Now plant him down among far- 
mers, firemen, Indians, and emigrants. Set a dog 
on him : set a highwayman on him : try him with 



230 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

a course of mobs : send him to Kansas, to Pike's 
Peak, to Oregon : and, if he have true faculty, 
this may be the element he wants, and he will come 
out of it with broader wisdom and manly power, 
^sop, Saadi, Cervantes, Regnard, have been taken 
by corsairs, left for dead, sold for slaves, and know 
the realities of human life. 

Bad times have a scientific value. These are 
occasions a good learner would not miss. As we 
go gladly to Faneuil Hall, to be played upon by the 
stormy winds and strong fingers of enraged patriot- 
ism, so is a fanatical persecution, civil war, na- 
tional bankruptcy, or revolution, more rich in the 
central tones than languid years of prosperity. 
What had been, ever since our .memory, solid 
continent, yawns apart, and discloses its compo- 
sition and genesis. We learn geology the morning 
after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven 
mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the 
sea. 

In our life and culture, everything is worked 
up, and comes in use, — passion, war, revolt, bank- 
ruptcy, and not less, folly and blunders, insult, en- 
nui, and bad company. Nature is a rag-merchant, 
who works up every shred and ort and end into 
new creations ; like a good chemist, whom I found, 
the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old 
shirts into pure white sugar. Life is a boundless 
privilege, and when you pay for your ticket, and 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE \A AY. 23i 

get into the car, you have no guess what good com- 
pany you shall find there. You buy much that is 
not rendered in the bill. Men achieve a certain 
greatness unawares, when working to another aim. 
If now in this connection of discourse, we should 
ventui'e on laying down the first obvious rules of 
life, I will not here repeat the first rule of economy, 
already propounded once and again, that every 
man shall maintain himself, — but I will say, get 
health. No labor, pains, temperance, poverty, nor 
exercise, that can gain it, must be grudged. For 
sickness is a cannibal which eats up all the life 
and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs its own 
sons and daughters. I figure it as a pale, wailing, 
distracted phantom, absolutely selfish, heedless of 
what is good and great, attentive to its sensa- 
tions, losing its soul, and afflicting other souls with 
meanness and mopings, and with ministration to 
its voracity of trifles. Dr. Johnson said severely, 
'' Every man is a rascal as soon as he is sick." 
Drop the cant, and treat it sanely. In dealing 
with the drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. 
We must treat the sick with the same firmness, 
giving them, of course, every aid, — but withhold- 
ing ourselves. I once asked a clergyman in a 
retired town, who were his companions ? what 
men of ability he saw ? he replied, that he spent 
his time with the sick and the dying. I said, he 
seemed to me to need quite other company, and all 



232 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the more that he had this : for if people were sick 
and dying to any purpose, we would leave all and 
go to them, but, as far as I had observed, they were 
as frivolous as the rest, and sometimes much more 
frivolous. Let us engage our companions not to 
spare us. I knew a wise woman who said to her 
friends, " When I am old, rule me." And the 
best part of health is fine disposition. It is more 
essential than talent, even in the works of tal- 
ent. Nothing will supply the want of sunshine 
to peaches, and, to make knowledge valuable, you 
must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever 
you are sincerely pleased, you are nourished. The 
joy of the spirit indicates its strength. All healthy 
things are sweet-tempered. Genius works in sport, 
and goodness smiles to the last ; and, for the rea- 
son, that whoever sees the law which distributes 
things, does not despond, but is animated to great 
desires and endeavors. He who desponds betrays 
that he has not seen it. 

'Tis a Dutch proverb, that "paint costs nothing," 
such are its preserving quahties in damp climates. 
Well, sunshine costs less, yet is finer pigment. And 
so of cheerfiilness, or a good temper, the more it ia 
spent, the more of it remains. The latent heat of 
an ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible. You 
may rub the same chip of pine to the point of 
kindling, a hundred times ; and the power of 
happiness of any soul is not to be computed or 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 233 

drained. It is observed that a depression of spirits 
develops the germs of a plague in individuals and 
nations. 

It is an old commendation of right behavior, 
^' AUis Icetus, sapiens sibi,^^ which our English prov^- 
erb translates, " Be merry and wise." I know how 
easy it is to men of the world to look grave and 
sneer at your sanguine youth, and its glittering 
dreams. But I find the gayest castles in the air that 
were ever piled, far better for comfort and for use, 
than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and 
caverned out by grumbling, discontented people. 
I know those miserable fellows, and I hate them, 
who see a black star always riding through tlit 
light and colored clouds m the sky overhead : 
waves of light pass over and hide it for a moment, 
but the black star keeps fast in the zenith. But 
power dwells with cheerfulness ; hope puts us in a 
working mood, whilst despair is no muse, and un- 
tunes the active powers. A man should make life 
and Nature happier to us, or he had better never 
been born. When the political economist reckons 
up the unproductive classes, he should put at the 
Head this class of pitiers of themselves, cravers of 
sympathy, bew^ailing imaginary disasters. An old 
French verse runs, in my translation : — 

Some of your griefs you have cured, 
And the sharpest you still have survived; 

But what torments of pain j'ou endured 
From evils that never arrived! 



234 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

There are three wants which never can be satis- 
fied : that of the rich, who wants something more ; 
that of the sick, who wants something different ; 
and that of the traveller, who says, ' Anywhere but 
here.' The Turkish cadi said to Layard, " After 
the fashion of thy people, thou hast w^andered from 
one place to another, until thou art happy and con- 
tent in none." My countrymen are not less infat- 
uated with the rococo toy of Italy. All America 
seems on the point of embarking for Europe. But 
we shall not always traverse seas and lands with 
light purposes, and for pleasure, as we say. One 
day we shall cast out the passion for Europe, by the 
passion for America. Cultm'e will give gravity and 
domestic rest to those who now travel only as not 
knowing how else to spend money. Already, who 
provoke pity like that excellent family party just 
arriving in their well-appointed carriage, as far from 
home and any honest end as ever ? Each nation 
has asked successively, ' What are they here for ? ' 
until at last the party are shamefaced, and antici- 
pate the question at the gates of each town. 

Genial manners are good, and power of accom- 
modation to any circumstance, but the high prize 
of life, the crowning fortune of a man is to be born 
with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in em- 
ployment and happiness, — whether it be to make 
baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or 
songs, I doubt not this was the meaning of Soc- 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 235 

rates, when he pronounced artists the only truly 
wise, as being actually, not apparently so. 

In childhood, we fancied ourselves walled in by 
the horizon, as by a glass bell, and doubted not, 
by distant travel, we should reach the baths of the 
descending sun and stars. On experiment, the 
horizon flies before us, and leaves us on an end- 
less (common, sheltered by no glass bell. Yet 'tis 
strange how tenaciously we cling to that bell-astron- 
omy, of a protecting domestic horizon. I find the 
same illusion in the search after happiness, which I 
observe, every summer, recommenced in this neigh- 
borhood, soon after the pairing of the birds. The 
young people do not like the town, do not like the 
sea-shore, they will go inland ; find a dear cottage 
deep in the mountains, secret as their hearts. They 
set forth on their travels in search of a home : they 
reach Berkshire ; they reach Vermont ; they look 
at the farms ; — good farms, high mountain-sides : 
but where is the seclusion ? The farm is near this ; 
'tis near that ; they have got far from Boston, but 
'tis near Albany, or near Burlington, or near Mon- 
treal. They explore a farm, but the house is small, 
old, thin ; discontented people lived there, and are 
gone : — there's too much sky, too much out-doors ; 
loo public. The youth aches for solitude. When 
he comes to the house, he passes through the house. 
That does not make the deep recess he sought. 
' Ah ! now, I perceive,' he says, ' it must be deep 



236 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

with persons ; friends only can give depth.' Yes, 
but there is a great dearth, this year, of friends ; 
hard to find, and hard to have when found : they 
are just going away : they too are in the whirl of 
the fhttincT world, and have encrao-ements and neces- 
sities. They are just starting for Wisconsin ; havL 
letters from Bremen: — see you again, soon. Slow, 
slow to learn the lesson, that there is but one depth, 
but one interior, and that is — his purpose. When 
ioy or calamity or genius shall show him it, then 
voods, then farms, then city shopmen and cab- 
Irivers, indifferently with prophet or friend, will 
mirror back to him its unfathomable heaven, its 
populous soHtude. 

The uses of travel are occasional, and short ; but 
the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversa- 
tion ; and this is a main function of life. What a 
difference in the hospitality of minds ! Inestimable 
is he to whom we can say what we cannot say to 
ourselves. Others are involuntarily hurtful to us, 
and bereave us of the power of thought, impound 
and imprison us. As, when there is sympathy, 
there needs but one wise man in a company, and 
all are wise, -- so, a blockhead makes a blockhead 
of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb 
possesses this brother. When he comes into the 
office or public room, the society dissolves ; one 
after another slips out, and the apartment is at his 
disposal. What is incurable but a frivolous habit ? 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 237 

A fly Is as untamable as a hyena. Yet folly In 
the sense of fun, fooling, or dawdling can easily 
be borne ; as Talleyrand said, " I find nonsense 
singularly refreshing ; " but a virulent, aggressive 
fool taints the reason of a household. I have seen 
a whole family of quiet, sensible people unhinged 
and beside themselves, victims of such a rogue. 
For the steady wrongheadedness of one perverse 
])erson irritates the best : since we must withstand 
absurdity. But resistance only exasperates the ac- 
rid fool, who believes that Nature and gravitation 
are quite wrong, and he only Is right. Hence all 
the dozen inmates are soon perverted, with what- 
ever virtues and industries they have. Into contra- 
dictors, accusers, explainers, and repairers of this 
one malefactor ; like a boat about to be overset, or 
a carriage run away with, — not only the foolish 
pilot or driver, but everybody on board is forced to 
assume strange and ridiculous attitudes, to balance 
the vehicle and prevent the upsetting. For remedy, 
whilst the case is yet mild, I recommend phlegm 
and truth : let all the truth that is spoken or done 
be at the zero of indifferency, or truth itself will be 
folly. But, when the case Is seated and malignant, 
the only safety is In amputation ; as seamen say, 
you shall cut and run. How to live with unfit 
companions ? — for, with such, life Is for the most 
part spent : and experience teaches little better than 
our earliest instinct of self-defence, namely, not to 



238 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

engage, not to mix yourself In any manner with 
them ; but let their madness spend itself unopposed ; 
— you are you, and I am I. 

Conversation is an art in which a man has all 
mankind for his competitors, for it Is that which all 
are practising every day while they live. Our habit 
of thought, — take men as they rise, — is not satis- 
fying ; in the common experience, I fear, it is poor 
and squalid. The success which will content them, 
is, a bargain, a lucrative employment, an advan- 
tage gained over a competitor, a marriage, a patri- 
mony, a legacy, and the like. With these objects, 
their conversation deals with surfaces : politics, 
trade, personal defects, exaggerated bad news, and 
the rain. This is forlorn, and they feel sore and 
sensitive. Now, if one comes who can illuminate 
this dark house with thoughts, show them their 
native riches, what gifts they have, how indispen- 
sable each is, what magical powers over nature 
and men; what access to poetry, religion, and 
the powers which constitute character ; he wakes 
in them the feeling of worth, his suggestions re- 
quire new ways of living, new books, new men, 
new arts and sciences, — then we come out of our 
egg-shell existence into the great dome, and see 
the zenith over and the nadir under us. Instead 
of the tanks and buckets of knowledge to which 
we are daily confined, we come down to the shore 
of the sea, and dip our hands in Its miraculous 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 239 

waves. 'Tis wonderful the effect on the company. 
They are not the men they were. They have 
all been to California, and all have come back 
millionnaires. There is no book and no pleasure 
in life comparable to it. Ask what is best in our 
experience, and we shall say, a few pieces of plain- 
dealing with wise people. Our conversation once 
and again has apprised us that we belong to better 
circles than we have yet beheld ; that a mental 
power invites us, whose generalizations are more 
worth for joy and for effect than anything that is 
now called philosophy or literature. In excited 
conversation, we have glimpses of the Universe, 
hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights 
and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as we can 
hardly attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles 
sometimes profusely given, to which the memory 
g0(3S back in barren hours. 

Add the consent of will and temperament, and 
there exists the covenant of friendship. Our chief 
want in life, is, somebody who shall make us do 
what we can. This is the service of a friend. 
With him we are easily great. There is a sublime 
attraction in him to whatever virtue is in us. How 
he flings wide the doors of existence ! What ques- 
tions we ask of him ! what an understanding we 
have ! how few words are needed ! It is the only 
real society. An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Ta- 
leb, writes with sad truth, — 



240 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

" He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 
And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere." 

But few writers have said anything better to tliia 
point than Hafiz, who indicates this relation as the 
test of mental health : " Thou learnest no secret 
antil thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound 
00 heavenly knowledge enters." Neither is life 
(ong enough for friendship. That is a serious and 
majestic affair, like a royal presence, or a religion, 
and not a postilion's dinner to be eaten on the run. 
There is a pudency about friendship, as about love, 
and though fine souls never lose sight of it, yet they 
do not name it. With the first class of men our 
friendship or good understanding goes quite behind 
all accidents of estrangement, of condition, of repu- 
tation. And yet we do not provide for the greatest 
good of life. We take care of our health ; we lay 
up money ; we make our roof tight, and our cloth- 
ing sufficient ; but who provides wisely that he shall 
not be wanting in the best property of all, — friends? 
We know that all our training is to fit us for this, 
and we do not take the step towards it. How long 
shall we sit and wait for these benefactors ? 

It makes no difference, in looking back five years, 
how you have been dieted or dressed ; whether you 
have been lodged on the first floor or the attic ; 
whether you have had gardens and baths, good cat- 
tle and horses, have been carried in a neat equipage, 
or in a ridiculous truck : these things are forgot- 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THL WAY. 241 

ten so quickly, and leave no effect. But it counts 
much whetlier we have had good companions, in 
tliat time ; — almoiit as much as what we have 
been doing. And see the overpowering impor- 
tance of neighborhood in all association. As it is 
marriage, fit or unfit, that makes our home, so it 
is who lives near us of equal social degree, — a few 
people at convenient distance, no matter how bad 
company, — these, and these only, shall be your 
life's companions : and all those who are native, 
congenial, and by many an oath of the heart, sacra- 
mented to you, are gradually and totally lost. You 
cannot deal systematically with this fine element 
of society, and one may take a good deal of pains 
to bring people together, and to organize clubs and 
debating societies, and yet no result come of it. 
But it is certain that there is a great deal of good 
in us that does not know itself, and that a habit of 
union and competition brings people up and keeps 
/hem up to their highest point ; that life would be 
.*wice or ten times life, if spent with wise and fruit- 
•qI companions. The obvious inference is, a little 
useful deliberation and preconcert, when one goes 
to buy house and land. 

But wc live with people on other platforms ; we 
live with dtspendents, not only with the young 
whom we are to teach all we know, and clothe 
with the aoLvantgiges we have earned, but also with 
those who serve us directly, and for money. Yet 
11 



242 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the old rules liold good. Let not the tie be mer- 
cenary, though the service is measured by money. 
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not 
make life hard to any. This point is acquiring new 
importance in American social life. Our domestic 
service is usually a foolish fracas of unreasonable 
demand on one side, and shirking on the other. A 
man of wit was asked, in the train, what was his 
errand in the city ? He replied, " I have been sent 
to procure an angel to do cooking." A lady com- 
plained to me, that, of her two maidens, one Avas 
absent-minded, and the other was absent-bodied. 
And the evil increases from the ignorance and hos- 
tility of every ship-load of the immigrant population 
swarming into houses and farms. Few people dis- 
cern that it rests with the master or the mistress 
what service comes from the man or the maid ; that 
this identical hussy was a tutelar spirit in one 
house, and a haridan in the other. All sensible 
people are selfish, and nature is tugging at every 
contract to make the terms of it fair. If you are 
proposing only your own, the other party must deal 
a little hardly by you. If you deal generously, the 
other, though selfish and unjust, will make an ex- 
ception in your favor, and deal truly with you. 
When I asked an iron-master about the slag and 
cinder in railroad iron, — " O," he said, " there's 
always good iron to be had : if there's cinder in 
the iron, 'tis because tliere was cinder in the pay." 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 243 

But wliy multiply these topics, and their illus- 
trations, which are endless ? Life brings to each 
his task, and, whatever art you select, algebra, 
planting, architecture, poems, commerce, politics, — 
all are attainable, even to the miraculous triumphs, 
on the same terms, of selecting that for which you 
are apt ; — begin at the beginning, proceed in order, 
step by step. 'Tis as easy to twist iron anchors, 
and braid cannons, as to braid straw, to boil granite 
as to boil water, if you take all the steps in order. 
Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, 
some superstition about luck, some step omitted, 
which Nature never pardons. The happy con- 
ditions of life may be had on the same terms. 
Their attraction for you is the pledge that they 
are within your reach. Our prayers are prophets. 
There must be fidelity, and there must be ad- 
herence. How respectable the life that clings to 
its objects ! Youthful aspirations are fine things, 
your theories and plans of life are fair and com 
mendable : — but will you stick ? Not one, I fear, 
in that Common full of people, or, in a thousand, but 
one : and, when you tax them with treachery, and 
remind them of their high resolutions, they have for- 
gotten that they made a vow. The individuals are 
fugitive, and in the act of becoming something else, 
and irresponsible. The race is great, the ideal fair, 
but the men whifflins: and unsure. The hero is he 
who is immovably centred. The main difference 
between people seems to be, that one man can 



244 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

come under oLligatioris on whicli you can rely, — 
is obligable ; and another is not. As he has not a 
law within him, there's nothing to tie him to. 

'Tis inevitable to name particulars of virtue, and 
of condition, and to exao-gerate them. But all rests 
at last on that integrity which dwarfs talent, and 
can spare it. Sanity consists in not being sub- 
dued by your means. Fancy prices are paid for 
position, and for the culture of talent, but to the 
grand interests, superficial success is of no account. 
The man, — it is his attitude, — not feats, but 
forces, — not on set days and public occasions, but, 
at all hours, and in repose alike as in energy, still 
formidable, and not to be disposed of. The popu- 
lace says, with Home Tooke, " If you would be 
powerful, pretend to be powerful." I prefer to say, 
with the old prophet, " Seekest thou great things ? 
seek them not : " — or, what was said of a Spanish 
prince, " The more you took from him, the greater 
he looked." Plus on lid ote^ plus il est grand. 

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great 
points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the 
obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metro- 
politan life, and that these few are alone to be re- 
garded, — the escape from all false ties ; courage 
to be what we are ; and love of what is simple 
and beautiful ; independence, and cheerful relation, 
these are the essentials, — these, and the wish to 
serve, — to add somewhat to the well-being of 
men. 



VIII. 
BEAUTY 



Was never form and never face 
So sweet to Seyd as only grace 
Which did not slumber like a stone 
But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
Beauty chased he everywhere, 
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
He smote the lake to feed his eye 

With the beryl beam of the broken wave 
He flung in pebbles well to hear 

The moment's music which they gave. 
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
From nodding pole and belting zone. 
He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centred and from errant sphere. 
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
In dens of passion, and pits of wo, 
He saw strong Eros struggling through, 
To sun the dark and solve the curse. 
And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
While thus to love he gave his days 
In loyal worship, scorning praise, 
How spread their lures for him, in vain, 
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain I 
He thought it happier to be dead, 
To die for Boautv, tlsau live for bread. 



BEAUTY. 

The spiral tendency of vegetation infects edu- 
cation also. Our books approach very slowly the 
things we most wish to know. What a parade we 
make of our science, and how far off, and at arm's 
length, it is from its objects ! Our botany is all 
names, not powers : poets and romancers talk of 
herbs of grace and healing ; but what does the 
botanist know of the virtues of his weeds ? The 
geologist lays bare the strata, and can tell them all 
on his fingers : but does he know what effect passes 
into the man who builds his house in them ? what 
effect on the race that inhabits a granite shelf? 
what on the inhabitants of marl and of alluvium? 

We should go to the ornithologist with a new 
feeling, if he could teach us what the social birds 
say, when they sit in the autumn council, talk- 
ing together in the trees. The want of sympathy 
makes his record a dull dictionary. His result is 
a dead bird. The bird is not in its ounces and 
inches, but in its relations to Nature ; and the skin 
or skeleton you show me, is no more a heron, than 
a heap of ashes or a bottle of gases into which h.is 



248 C02sI)UCT OF LIFE 

body has been reduced, is Dante or Washington. 
The naturahst is led from the road by the whole 
distance of his fancied advance. The boy had 
juster views when he gazed at the shells on the 
beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to call 
them by their names, than the man in the pride of 
his nomenclature. Astrology interested us, for it 
tied man to the system. Instead of an isolated beg' 
gar, the farthest star felt him, and he felt the star. 
However rash and however falsified by pretenders 
and traders in it, the hint was true and divine, the 
soul's avowal of its large relations, and, that ch- 
mate, century, remote natures, as well as near, are 
part of its biography. Chemistry takes to pieces, 
but it does not construct. Alchemy which sought 
to transmute one element into another, to prolong 
life, to arm with power, — that was m the right 
direction. All our science lacks a human side. 
The tenant is more than the house. Bucrs and 
stamens and spores, on which we lavish so many 
years, are not finalities, and man, when his powers 
unfold in order, will take Nature along with him, 
and emit light into all her recesses. The human 
heart concerns us more than the poring into micro- 
scopes, and is larger than can be measured by the 
pompous figures of the astronomer. 

We are just so frivolous and skeptical. Men 
hold themselves cheap and vile : and yet a man is 
a fagot of thunderbolts. All the elements pour 



BEAUTY. 249 

through his system : he is the flood of the flood, 
and fire of the fire ; he feels the antipodes and the 
pole, as drops of his blood : they are the extension 
of his personality. His duties are measured by that 
instrument he is ; and a right and perfect man 
would be felt to the centre of the Copernican sys- 
tem. 'Tis curious that we only believe as deep as 
we live. We do not think heroes can exert any 
more awful power than that surface-play which 
amuses us. A deep man believes in miracles, 
waits for them, believes in magic, believes that 
the orator will decompose his adversary ; believes 
that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's bless- 
ing can heal ; that love can exalt talent ; can 
overcome all odds. From a great heart secret 
magnetisms flow incessantly to draw great events. 
But we prize very humble utilities, a prudent hus- 
band, a good son, a voter, a citizen, and deprecate 
any romance of character ; and perhaps reckon only 
his money value, — his intellect, his affection, as a 
sort of bill of exchange, easily convertible into fine 
chambers, pictures, music, and wine. 

The motive of science was the extension of man, 
on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch 
the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears 
understand the language of beast and bird, and 
the sense of the wind ; and, through his sympathy, 
heaven and earth should talk with him. But that 
is not our science. These geologies, chemistries, 
11* 



250 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

astronomies, seem to make wise, but they leave us 
where they found us. The invention is of use to 
the inventor, of questionable help to any other. 
The formulas of science are like the papers in your 
pocket-book, of no value to any but the owner. 
Science in England, in America, is jealous of 
theory, hates the name of love and moral pur- 
pose. There's a revenge for this inhumanity. 
What manner of man does science make ? The 
boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be 
such a kind of man as my professor is. The col- 
lector has dried all the plants in his herbal, but he 
has lost weight and humor. He has got all snakes 
and lizards in his phials, but science has done for 
him also, and has put the man into a bottle. Our 
reliance on the physician is a kind of despair of 
ourselves. The clergy have bronchitis, which does 
not seem a certificate of spiritual health. Macready 
thought it came of the falsetto of their voicing. 
An Indian prince, Tisso, one day riding in the for- 
est, saw a herd of elk sporting. " See how happy," 
he said, " these browsing elks are ! Why should 
not priests, lodged and fed comfortably in the tern 
pies, also amuse themselves ? " Returning home, 
he imparted this reflection to the king. The king, 
on the next day, conferred the sovereignty on him, 
saying, " Prince, administer this empire for seven 
days : at the termination of that period, I shall put 
thee to death." At the end of the seventh day, 



BEAUTY. 251 

the king inquired, " From what cause hast thou be- 
come so emaciated ? " He answered, " From the 
horror of death." The monarch rejoined : " Live, 
my child, and be wise. Thou hast ceased to take 
recreation, saying to thyself, in seven days I shall 
be put to death. These priests in the temple 
incessantly meditate on death ; how can they en- 
ter into healthful diversions ? " But the men of 
science or the doctors or the clergy are not victims 
of their pursuits, more than others. The miller, the 
lawyer, and the merchant, dedicate themselves to 
their own details, and do not come out men of more 
force. Have they divination, grand aims, hospi- 
tality of soul, and the equality to any event, which 
we demand in man, or only the reactions of the 
mill, of the wares, of the chicane ? 

No object really interests us but man, and in 
man only his superiorities ; and, though we are 
aware of a perfect law in Nature, it has fascination 
for us only through its relation to him, or, as it 
is rooted in the mind. At the birth of Winckel- 
mann, more than a hundred years ago, side by side 
with this arid, departmental, post morteyn science, 
rose an enthusiasm in the study of Beauty ; and 
perhaps some sparks from it may yet light a con- 
ilagration in the other. Knowledge of men, knowl- 
edge of manners, the power of form, and our 
'sensibility to personal influence, never go out of 
fashion. These are facts of a science which we 



252 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

study without book, whose teachers and subjects 
are always near us. 

So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much 
of our knowledge in this direction belongs to the 
chapter of pathology. The crowd in the street 
oftener furnishes degradations than angels or re- 
deemers : but they all prove the transparency. 
Every spirit makes its house ; and we can give a 
shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant. 
But not less does Nature furnish us with every sign 
of grace and goodness. The delicious faces of chil- 
dren, the beauty of school-girls, " the sweet serious- 
ness of sixteen," the lofty air of well-born, well- 
bred boys, the passionate histories in the looks and 
manners of youth and early manhood, and the va- 
ried power in all that well-known company that 
escort us through life, — we know how these forms 
thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge us. 

Beauty is the form under which the intellect pre- 
fers to study the world. All privilege is that of 
beauty ; for there are many beauties ; as, of general 
nature, of the human face and form, of manners, 
of brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty of 
tlie soul. 

The ancients believed that a genius or demon 
took possession at birth of each mortal, to guide 
him; that these genii were sometimes seen as a 
flame of fire partly immersed in the bodies which 
they governed; — on an evil man, resting on his 



BEAUTY. 253 

head ; in a good man, mixed with his substance. 
They thought the same genius, at the death of its 
ward, entered a new-born child, and they pre- 
tended to guess the pilot, by the sailing of the ship. 
We recognize obscurely the same fact, though we 
give it our own names. We say, that every man 
is entitled to be valued by his best moment. We 
measure our friends so. We know, they have 
intervals of folly, whereof we take no heed, but 
wait the reappearings of the genius, which are 
sure and beautifal. On the other side, everybody 
knows people who appear beridden, and who, with 
all degrees of ability, never impress us with the 
air of free agency. They know it too, and peep 
with their eyes to see if you detect their sad 
plight. We fancy, could we pronounce the solv- 
ing word, and disenchant them, the cloud would 
roll up, the little rider would be discovered and un- 
seated, and they would regain their freedom. The 
remedy seems never to be far off, since the first 
step into thought lifts this mountain of necessity. 
Thought is the pent air-ball which can rive the 
planet, and the beauty which certain objects have 
for him, is th? friendly fire which expands the 
thought, and acquaints the prisoner that liberty 
and power await him. 

The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, 
to thinkincr of the foundations of thino-s. Goethe 
said, " The beautiful is a manifestation of secret 



'2 >-i CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

laws of Nature, which, but for this appearance, had 
been forever concealed from us." And the work- 
ing of this deep instinct makes all the excitement 
— much of it superficial and absurd enough — 
about works of art, which leads armies of vain 
travellers every year to Italy, Greece, and Egypt. 
Every man values every acquisition he makes 
in the science of beauty, above his possessions. 
The most useful man in the most usefiil world, so 
long as only commodity was served, would remain 
unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life 
acquires a very high value. 

I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers 
not to attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather 
enumerate a few of its qualities. We ascribe beauty 
to that which is simple ; which has no superfluous 
parts ; which exactly answers its end ; which stands 
related to all things ; which is the mean of many 
extremes. It is the most enduring quality, and the 
most ascending quality. We say, love is blind, and 
the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round 
his eyes. Blind : — yes, because he does not see 
what he does not like ; but the sharpest-sighted 
hunter in the universe is Love, for finding what he 
seeks, and only that ; and the mythologists tell us, 
that Vulcan was painted lame, and Cupid blind, to 
call attention to the fact, that one was all limbs, 
and the other, all eyes. In the true mythology, 
Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him aa 



BEAUTY. 255 

a guide : nor can we express a deeper sense than 
when we say, Beauty is the pilot of the young 
soul. 

Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and 
colors of Nature have a new charm for us in our 
perception, that not one ornament was added for 
ornament, but is a sign of some better health, or 
more excellent action. Eleo;ance of form in bird or 
beast, or in the human figure, marks some excel- 
lence of structure : or beauty is only an invitation 
from what belongs to us. 'Tis a law of botany, 
that in plants, the same virtues follow the same 
forms. It is a rule of largest application, true in 
a plant, true in a loaf of bread, that in the con- 
struction of any fabric or organism, any real in- 
crease of fitness to its end, is an increase of 
beauty. 

The lesson taught by the study of Greek and 
of Gothic art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaelite 
painting, was worth all the research, — namely, 
that all beauty must be organic ; that outside em- 
bellishment is deformity. It is the soundness of 
the bones that ultimates itself in a peach-bloom 
complexion : health of constitution that makes the 
sparkle and the power of the eye. 'Tis the adjust 
ment of the size and of the joining of the sockets 
of the skeleton, that gives grace of outline and the 
finer grace of movement. The cat and the deer 
cannot move or sit inelegantly. The dancing- 



25G CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

master can never teach a badly built man to walk 
well. The tmt of the flower proceeds from its root, 
and the lustres of the sea-shell begin with its exist- 
ence. Hence our taste in building rejects paint, 
and all shifts, and shows the original grain of 
the ^Yood : refuses pilasters and columns that sup- 
port nothing, and allows the real supporters of 
the house honestly to show themselves. Every 
necessary or organic action pleases the beholder. 
A man leading a horse to water, a farmer sowing 
seed, the labors of haymakers in the field, the car- 
penter building a ship, the smith at his forge, or,, 
whatever useful labor, is becoming to the wise eye. 
But if it is done to be seen, it is mean. How 
beautiful are ships on the sea ! but ships in the 
theatre, — or ships kept for picturesque effect on 
Virginia Water, by George IV., and men hired to 
stand in fitting costumes at a penny an hour ! — 
What a difference in effect between a battalion 
of troops marching to action, and one of our inde- 
pendent companies on a holiday ! In the midst 
of a military show, and a festal procession gay with 
banners, I saw a boy seize an old tin pan that lay 
rusting under a wall, and poising it on the top of a 
stick, he set it turning, and made it describe the 
most elegant imaginable curves, and drew away 
attention from the decorated procession by this 
starthng beauty. 

,Ajiother text from the mytholo^ists. The 



BEAUTY. 257 

Greeks fabled that Venus was born of the foam 
of the sea. Nothing interests us which is stark or 
bounded, but only what streams with life, what is 
in act or endeavor to reach somewhat beyond. The 
pleasure a palace or a temple gives the eye, is, that 
an order and method has been communicated to 
stones, so that they speak and geometrize, become 
tender or sublime with expression. Beauty is the 
moment of transition, as if the form were just ready 
to flow into other forms. Any fixedness, heap- 
ing, or concentration on one feature, — a long nose, 
a sharp chin, a hump-back, — is the reverse of the 
flowing, and therefore deformed. Beautiful as is 
the symmetry of any form, if the form can move, 
we seek a more excellent symmetry. The inter- 
ruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire 
the restoration of symmetry, and to watch the steps 
through which it is attained. This is the charm 
of running water, sea- waves, the flight of birds, and 
the locomotion of animals. This is the theory of 
dancing, to recover continually in changes tne lost 
equilibrium, not by abrupt and angular, but by 
gradual and curving movements. I have been told 
by persons of experience in matters of taste, that 
the fashions follow a law of gradation, and are 
never arbitrary. The new mode is always only a 
step onward in the same direction as the last mode ; 
and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts 
the new fashion. This fact suggests the reason of 



258 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

all mistakes and offence in our own modes. It is 
necessary in music, when you strike a discord, to 
let down the ear by an intermediate note or two 
to the accord again : and many a good experiment, 
born of good sense, and destined to succeed, fails, 
only because it is offensively sudden. I suppose, the 
Parisian milliner who dresses the world from her 
huperious boudoir will know how to reconcile the 
Bloomer costume to the eye of mankind, and make 
it triumphant over Punch himself, by interposing 
the just gradations. I need not say, how wide the 
Bame law ranges ; and how much it can be hoped 
to effect. All that is a little harshly claimed by 
progressive parties, may easily come to be conceded 
without question, if this rule be observed. Thus 
the circumstances may be easily imagined, in which 
woman may speak, vote, argue causes, legislate, and 
drive a coach, and all the most naturally in the 
world, if only it come by degrees. To this stream- 
ing or flowing belongs the beauty that all circu- 
lar movement has ; as, the circulation of waters, 
the circulation of the blood, the periodical mo- 
tion of planets, the annual wave of vegetation, 
the action and reaction of Nature : and, if we 
follow it out, this demand in our thought for 
an ever-onward action, is the argument for the 
immortality. 

One more text from the mythologists is to the 
game purpose, — Beauty rides on a lion. Beauty 



BEAUTY. 259 

rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the 
result of perfect economy. The cell of the bee is 
built at that angle which gives the most strength 
with the least wax ; the bone or the quill of the 
bird gives the most alar strength, with the least 
v^eight. " It is the purgation of superfluities," said 
Michel Angelo. There is not a particle to spare 
m natural structures. There is a compelling rea- 
son in the uses of the plant, for every novelty 
of color or form : and our art saves material, by 
more skilful arrangement, and reaches beauty by 
taking every superfluous ounce that can be spared 
from a wall, and keeping all its strength in the 
poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this art of omis- 
sion is a chief secret of power, and, in general, it is 
proof of high culture, to say the greatest matters in 
the simplest way. 

Veracity first of all, and forever. Rien de beau 
que le vrai. In all design, art lies in making your 
object prominent, but there is a prior art in choos- 
ing objects that are prominent. The fine arts have 
nothing casual, but spring from the instincts of the 
nations that created them. 

Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. 
In a house that I know, I have noticed a block of 
spei'maceti lying about closets and mantel-pieces, for 
twenty years together, simply bocause the tallow- 
man gave it the form of a rabbit ; and, I suppose, it 
may continue to be lugged about unchanged for a 



260 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

century. Let an artist scrawl a few lines or figures 
on the 1)ack of a letter, and that scrap of paper is 
rescued from danger, is put in portfolio, is framed 
and glazed, and, in proportion to the beauty of the 
lines drawn, will be kept for centuries. Burns 
writes a copy of verses, and sends them to a news- 
])aper, and the human race take charge of them 
that they shall not perish. 

As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see 
how surely a beautiful form strikes the fancy of 
men, and is copied and reproduced without end. 
How many copies are there of the Belvedere 
Apollo, the Venus, the Psyche, the Warwick Vase, 
the Parthenon, and the Temple of Vesta ? These 
are objects of tenderness to all. In our cities, an 
ugly building is soon removed, and is never re- 
peated, but any beautiful building is copied and 
improved upon, so that all masons and carpenters 
work to repeat and preserve the agreeable forms, 
whilst the ugly ones die out. 

The felicities of design in art, or in works of 
Nature, are shadows or forerunners of that beauty 
which reaches its perfection in the human form. 
All men are its lovers. Wherever it goes, it creates 
joy and hilarity, and everything is permitted to it. 
It reaches its height in woman. " To Eve," say 
the Mahometans, " God gave two thirds of all 
beauty." A beautiful woman is a practical poet, 
taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope, 



BEAUTY. 261 

and eloquence, in all whom she approaches. Some 
favors of condition must go with it, since a certain 
serenity is essential, but we love its reproofs and 
superiorities. Nature wishes that woman should 
attract man, yet she often cunningly moulds into 
her face a little sarcasm, which seems to say, ' Yes, 
I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better 
kind of a man than any I yet behold.' French 
memoires of the fifteenth century celebrate the 
name of Pauline de Viguiere, a virtuous and ac- 
complished maiden, who so fired the enthusiasm of 
her contemporaries, by her enchanting form, that 
the citizens of her native city of Toulouse obtained 
the aid of the civil authorities to compel her to ap- 
pear pubKcly on the balcony at least twice a week, 
and, as often as she showed herself, the crowd was 
dangerous to life. Not less, in England, in the last 
century, was the fame of the Gunnings, of whom, 
Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton ; and 
Maria, the Earl of Coventry. Walpole says, " the 
concourse was so great, when the Duchess of Ham- 
ilton was presented at court, on Friday, that even 
the noble crowd in the di-awing-room clambered on 
chairs and tables to look at her. There are mobs 
at their doors to see them get into their chairs, and 
people go early to get places at the theatres, when 
it is known they will be there." " Such crowds," he 
adds, elsewhere, " fiock to see the Duchess of Ham- 
ilton, that seven hundred people sat up all night, in 



262 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

and about an inn, in Yorkshire, to see her get into 
her post-chaise next morning." 

But why need we console ourselves with the 
fames of Helen of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of 
Toulouse, or the Duchess of Hamilton ? We all 
know tliis magic very well, or can divine it. It 
does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes 
never so long. Women stand related to beautiful 
Nature around us, and the enamored youth mixes 
their form with moon and stars, with woods and 
waters, and the pomp of summer. They heal us 
of awkwardness by their words and looks. We ob- 
serve their intellectual influence on the most serious 
student. They refine and clear his mind ; teach 
him to put a pleasing method into what is dry and 
difficult. We talk to them, and wish to be listened 
to ; we fear to fatigue them, and acquire a facility 
of expression which passes from conversation into 
habit of style. 

That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the 
perpetual effort of Nature to attain it. Mirabeau 
had an ugly face on a handsome ground ; and we 
see faces every day which have a good type, but 
have been marred in the casting : a proof that wo 
are all entitled to beauty, should have been beau- 
tiful, if our ancestors had kept the laAvs, — as every 
lily and every rose is well. But our bodies do not 
fit us, but caricature and satirize us. Thus, short 
legs, which constrain us to short, mincing steps, are 



BEAUTY. 263 

a kind of personal insult and contumely to the 
3wner ; and long stilts, again, put liim at perpetual 
disadvantage, and force him to stoop to the general 
level of mankind. Martial ridicules a gentleman 
of his day whose countenance resembled the face 
of a swimmer seen under water. Saadi describes 
a schoolmaster " so ugly and crabbed, that a sight 
of him would derange the ecstasies of the ortho- 
dox." Faces are rarely true to any ideal type, but 
are a record in sculpture of a thousand anecdotes 
of whim and folly. Portrait painters say that most 
faces and forms are irregular and unsymmetrical ; 
have one eye blue, and one gray; the nose not 
straight; and one shoulder higher than another; the 
hair unequally distributed, etc. The man is phys- 
ically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds 
and patches, borrowed unequally from good and 
bad ancestors, and a misfit fi-om the start. 

A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was 
thought to betray by this sign some secret favor 
of the immortal gods : and we can pardon pride, 
when a woman possesses such a figure, that wher- 
ever she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on 
the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she 
confers a favor on the world. And yet — it 
is not beauty that inspires the deepest passion. 
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. 
Beauty, without expression, tires. Abb^ Manage 
said of the President Le Bailleul, " that he was fit 



264 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

for nothing but to sit for his portrait." A Greek 
epigram intimates that the force of love is not 
shown by the courting of beautj, but when the 
like desire is mflamed for one who is ill-favored. 
And petulant old gentlemen, who have chanced to 
suffer some intolerable weariness from pretty people, 
or Avho have seen cut flowers to some profusion, or 
who see, after a world of pains have been success- 
fully taken for the costume, how the least mistake 
in sentiment takes all the beauty out of your 
clothes, — affirm, that the secret of ugliness consists 
not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting. 

We love any forms, however ugly, from which 
great qualities shine. If command, eloquence, art, 
or invention, exist in the most deformed person, 
all the accidents that usually displease, please, and 
raise esteem and wonder higher. The great orator 
was an emaciated, insignificant person, but he was 
all brain. Cardinal De Retz says of De Bouillon, 
" With the physiognomy of an ox, he had the 
perspicacity of an eagle." It was said of Hooke, 
the friend of Newton, " he is the most, and prom- 
ises the least, of any man in England." " Since 
I am so ugly," said Du Guesclin, " it behooves that 
I be bold." Sir Philip Sidney, the darling of man- 
kind, Ben Jonson tells us, " was no pleasant man in 
countenance, his face being spoiled with pimples, 
and of high blood, and long." Those who have 
ruled human destinies, like planets, for thousands 



BEAUTY. 265 

of years, were not handsome men. If a man can 
raise a small citj to be a great kingdom, can make 
bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join oceans by 
canals, can subdue steam, can organize victory, can 
lead the opinions of mankind, can enlarge knowl- 
edge, 'tis no matter whether his nose is parallel to 
his spine, as it ought to be, or whether he has 
a nose at all ; whether his legs are straight, or 
whether his legs are amputated ; his deformities 
will come to be reckoned ornamental, and advan- 
tageous on the whole. This is the triumph of 
expression, degrading beauty, charming us with a 
power so fine and friendly and intoxicating, that it 
makes admired persons insipid, and the thought of 
passing our lives with them insupportable. There 
are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and 
rippled by the play of thought, that we can hardly 
find what the mere features really are. When 
the delicious beauty of lineaments loses its power, 
it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared ; 
that an interior and durable form has been disclosed. 
Still, Beauty rides on her lion, as before. Still, " it 
was for beauty that the world was made." The 
lives of the Italian artists, who established a despot- 
ism of genius amidst the dukes and kings and mobs 
of their stormy epoch, prove how loyal men in all 
times are to a finer brain, a finer method, than their 
own. If a man can cut such a head on his stone 
gate-post as shall draw and keep a crowd about it 

12 



266 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

all clay, by Its beauty, good nature, and inscrutable 
meaning; — if a man can build a plain cottage with 
sucli symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces 
look cheap and vulgar ; can take such advantage 
of Nature, that all her powers serve him ; making 
use of geometry, instead of expense ; tapping a 
mountain for Ms water-jet ; causing the sun and 
moon to seem only the decorations of his estate; 
this is still the legitimate dominion of beauty. 

The radiance of the human form, though some- 
times astonishing, is only a biu'st of beauty for a 
few years or a few months, at the perfection of 
youth, and in most, rapidly declines. But we re- 
main lovers of it, only transferring our interest to 
interior excellence. And it is not only admirable 
in singular and salient talents, but also in the world 
of manners. 

But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. 
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, hand- 
some, but, until they speak to the imagination, not 
yet beautiful. This is the reason why beauty is 
still escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet 
possessed, it cannot be handled. Proclus says, " it 
swims on the light of forms." It is properly not in 
the form, but in the mind. It instantly deserts pos- 
session, and flies to an object in the horizon. If I 
could put my hand on the north star, would it be 
as beautiful ? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe 
in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For 



BEAUTY. 267 

the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at 
the same time. Wordsworth rightly speaks of " a 
light that never was on sea or land," meaning, that 
it was supplied by the observer, and the Welsh 
bard warns his countrywomen, that 

— "half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 

The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful, 
is a certain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest 
relation to the whole world, and so lift the object 
out of a pitifal individuality. Every natural feat- 
ure, — sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone, — 
has in it somewhat which is not private, but uni- 
versal, speaks of that central benefit which is the 
soul of Nature, and thereby is beautiful. And, in 
chosen men and women, I find somewhat in form, 
speech, and manners, which is not of their person 
and family, but of a humane, catholic, and spiritual 
character, and we love them as the sky. They 
have a largeness of suggestion, and their face and 
manners carry a certain grandeur, like time and 
justice. 

The feat of the imagination is in showing the 
convertibility of every thing into every other thing. 
Facts which had never before left their stark com- 
mon sense, suddenly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. 
My boots and chair and candlestick are fairies in 
disguise, meteors and constellations. All the facts 
in Nature are nouns of the intellect, and make 



268 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

the grammar of the eternal language. Every word 
lias a double, treble, or centuple use and meaning, 
"What ! has my stove and pepper-pot a false bottom I 
I cry you mercy, good shoe-box ! I did not know 
you were a jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to 
sparkle, and are clothed about with immortality. 
And there is a joy in perceiving the representative 
or symbolic character of a fact, which no bare fact 
or event can ever give. There are no days in 
life so memorable as those which vibrated to some 
stroke of the imagination. 

The poets are quite right in decking their mis- 
tresses with the spoils of the landscape, flower- 
gardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning, and 
stars of night, since all beauty points at identity, 
and whatsoever thing does not express to me the 
sea and sky, day and night, is somewhat forbidd<3n 
and wrong. Into every beautiful object, there en- 
ters somewhat immeasurable and divine, and just 
as much into form bounded by outlines, like moun- 
tains on the horizon, as into tones of music, or 
depths of space. Polarized light showed the secret 
architecture of bodies ; and when the second-sight 
of the mind is opened, now one color or form or 
gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a 
more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its 
deep holdings in the frame of things. 

The laws of this translation we do not know, or 
why on(^ feature or gesture enchants, why one w^ord 



BEAUTY. 269 

or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that 
the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or 
a phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders ; 
as if the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away 
mountains of obstruction, and deigns to draw a 
truer line, which the mind knows and owns. This 
is that haughty force of beauty, " vis superha 
formcB^'' which the poets praise, — under calm 
and precise outline, the immeasurable and divine : 
Beauty liiding all wisdom and power in its calm 
sky. 

All high beauty has a moral element in it, and 
I find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus 
Antoninus ; and the beauty ever in proportion to 
the depth of thought. Gross and obscure natures, 
however decorated, seem impure shambles ; but 
character gives splendor to youth, and awe to 
wrmkled skin and gray hairs. An adorer of truth 
we cannot choose but obey, and the woman who 
has shared with us the moral sentiment, — her locks 
must appear to us sublime. Thus there is a climb- 
ing scale of culture, from the first agreeable sensa- 
tion which a sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords 
t.ie eye, up through fair outlines and details of the 
landscape, features of the human face and form, 

si^ns and tokens of thouo;ht and character in man- 
es o 

ners, up to the ineffable mysteries of the intellect. 
Wherever we begin, thither our steps tend : an 
ascent from the joy of a horse in his trappings, up 



270 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

to the perception of Newton, that the glooe on 
which we ride is only a larger apple falling from 
a larger tree; up to the perception of Plato, that 
globe and universe are rude and early expressions 
of an all-dissolving Unity, — the first stair on the 
scale to the temple of the Mind. 



IX. 
ILLUSIONS 



Flow, flow the waves hatea, 

Accursed, adored, 

The waves of mutation : 

No anchorage is. 

Sleep is not, death is not ; 

Who seem to die hve. 

House you were born in, 

Friends of your spring-time, 

Old man and young maid, 

Day's toil and its guerdon, 

They are all vanishing, 

Fleeing to fables, 

Cannot be moored. 

See the stars through them, 

Through treacherous marbles. 

Know, the stars yonder, 

The stars everlasting. 

Are fugiti^'c also, 

And emulate, vaulted. 

The lambent heat-lightnings 

And fire-fly's flight. 

When thou dost return 
On the wave's circulation, 
Beholding the shimmer, 
The wil dissi£)ation, 



272 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



To change and to flow, 
The gas become solid, 
And phantoms and nothings 
Return to be things, 
And endless imbroglio 
Is law and the world, — 
Then fix'st shalt thou know, 
That in the wild turmoil, 
Horsed on the Proteus, 
Thou ridest to power, 
And to endurance. 



ILLUSIONS. 

Some years ago, in company with an agreeable 
party, I spent a long summer day in exploring 
the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, 
through spacious galleries affording a solid masonry 
foundation for the town and county overhead, the 
six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cav- 
ern to the innermost recess which tourists visit, — a 
niche or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and 
called, I believe, Serena's Bower. I lost the liglit 
of one day. I saw high domes, and bottomless pits ; 
heard the voice of unseen waterfalls ; paddled three 
quarters of a mile in the deep Echo River, whose 
waters are peopled with the blind fish ; crossed the 
streams " Lethe " and " Styx ; " plied with music 
and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries ; 
saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the 
sculptured and fretted chambers, — icicle, orange- 
flower, acanthus, grapes, and snowball. We shot 
Bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the 
sparry cathedrals, and examined all the master- 
pieces which the four combined engineers, water, 
limestone, gravitation, and time, could make In the 
dark. 

12* 



274 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

The mysteries and scenery of the cave had the 
same dignity that belongs to all natural objects, 
and which shames the fine things to which we fop- 
pishly compare them. I remarked, especially, the 
mimetic habit, with which Nature, on new instru- 
ments, hums her old tunes, making night to mimic 
day, and chemistry to ape vegetation. But I then 
took notice, and still chiefly remember, that the 
best thing which the cave had to oflPer was an illu- 
sion. On arriving at what is called the " Star- 
Chamber," our lamps were taken from us by the 
guide, and extinguished or put aside, and, on look- 
ing upwards, I saw or seemed to see the night 
heaven thick with stars glimmering more or less 
brightly over our heads, and even what seemed a 
comet flaming among them. All the party were 
touched with astonishment and pleasure. Our 
musical friends sung with much feeling a pretty 
song, " The stars are in the quiet sky," &c., and I 
sat down on the rocky floor to enjoy the serene pic- 
ture. Some crystal specks in the black ceiling high 
overhead, reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, 
yielded this magnificent effect. 

I own, I did not like the cave so well for eking 
out its sublimities with this theatrical trick. But I 
have had many experiences like it, before and since ; 
and we must be content to be pleased without too 
curiously analyzing the occasions. Our conversa- 
tion with Nature is not just what it seems. The 



ILLTTSIONS. 275 

CiOiid-rack, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows, 
and northern lights are not quite so spheral as our 
childhood thought them ; and the part our organ- 
ization plays in them is too large. The senses 
interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure 
with all they report of. Once, we fancied the earth 
a plane, and stationary. In admiring the sunset, 
we do not yet deduct the rounding, coordinating, 
pictorial powers of the eye. 

The same interference from our organization cre- 
ates the most of our pleasure and pain. Our first 
mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the 
joy which we give to the circumstance. Life is an 
ecstasy. Life is sweet as nitrous oxide ; and the 
fisherman dripping all day over a cold pond, the 
switchman at the railway intersection, the farmer in 
the field, the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the 
street, the hunter in the woods, the barrister with 
the jury, the belle at the ball, all ascribe a certain 
pleasure to their employment, Tvhich they them- 
selves give it. Health and appetite impart the 
sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat. We fancy 
that our civilization has got on far, but we still 
come back to our primers. 

We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, 
by our sentiments. The child walks amid heaps of 
illusions, which he does not like to have disturbed. 
The boy, how s^veet to him is his fancy ! how dear 
the storv of barons and battles ! What a hero he 



276 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

is, whilst he feeds on his heroes ! What a debt i?, 
his to imaginative books ! He has no better friend 
or influence, than Scott, Shakspeare, Plutarch, and 
Homer. The man lives to other objects, but who 
dare affirm that they are more real? Even the 
prose of the streets is full of refractions. In the 
life of the dreariest alderman, fancy enters into all 
details, and colors them with rosy hue. He imi- 
tates the air and actions of people whom he ad- 
mires, and is raised in his own eyes. He pays a 
debt quicker to a rich man than to a poor man. 
He wishes the bow and compliment of some leader 
in the state, or in society ; weighs what he says ; 
perhaps he never comes nearer to him for that, but 
dies at last better contented for this amusement of 
his eyes and his fancy. 

The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. 
In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, 
the carnival, the masquerade is at its height. No- 
body drops his domino. The unities, the fictions 
of the piece it would be an impertinence to break. 
The chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is 
paint ; nay, God is the painter ; and we rightly 
accuse the critic who destroys too many illusions. 
Society does not love its unmaskers. It was wittily, 
if somewhat bitterly, said by D'Alembeit, " qiCun 
etat de vajjeur etait un Stat tres fdcheux, pareecpiil 
nous faisait voir les choses comme elles sont.''^ I find 
men \ictims of illusion in all parts of life. Chil- 



ILLUSIONS. 277 

dren, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by- 
one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of 
illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, — 
for the Power has many names, — is stronger than 
the Titans, stronger than Apollo. Few have over- 
heard the gods, or surprised their secret. Life is 
a succession of lessons which must be lived to be 
understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle 
is another riddle. There are as many pillows 
of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. "We wake 
from one dream into another dream. The toys, to 
be sure, are various, and are graduated in refine- 
ment to the quality of the dupe. The intellectual 
man requires a fine bait ; the sots are easily amused. 
But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and 
the pageant marches at all hours, with music and 
banner and badge. 

Amid the joyous troop who give in to the chari- 
vari, comes now and then a sad-eyed boy, whose 
eyes lack the requisite refractions to clothe the 
show in due glory, and who is afflicted with a ten- 
dency to trace home the glittering miscellany of 
fruits and flowers to one root. Science is a search 
after identity, and the scientific whim is lurking in 
all corners. At the State Fair, a friend of mine 
complained that all the varieties of fancy pears in 
our orchards seem to have been selected by some- 
body who had a whim for a particular kind of pear, 
and only cultivited such as had that perfume ; they 



278 CONDl'CT OF LIFE. 

were all alike. And I remember the quarrel of an- 
other youth with the confectioners, that, when he 
racked his Avit to choose the best comfits in the 
shops, in all the endless varieties of sweetmeat he 
could only find three flavors, or two. What then ? 
Pears and cakes are good for something ; and be- 
cause you, unluckily, have an eye or nose too keen, 
v/hy need you spoil the comfort which the rest of us 
find in them ? I knew a humorist, who, in a good 
deal of rattle, had a grain or two of sense. He 
shocked the company by maintaining that the attri- 
butes of God were two, — power and risibility ; and 
that it was the duty of every pious man to keep up 
the comedy. And I have known gentlemen of 
great stake in the community, but whose sympa- 
thies were cold, — presidents of colleges, and gov- 
ernors, and senators, — who held themselves bound 
to sign every temperance pledge, and act with Bible 
societies, and missions, and peace-makers, and cry 
Hist-a-boy! to every good dog. We must not carry 
comity too far, but we all have kind impulses in this 
direction. When the boys come into my yard for 
leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into 
Nature's game, and affect to grant the permission 
reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find 
out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this 
tenderness is quite unnecessary ; the enchantments 
are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched 
with them. Bare and crrim to tears is the lot of the 



ILLUSIONS. 279 

children in the hovel I saw yesterday ; yet not the 
less they hung it round with frippery romance, like 
the children of the hapj^iest fortune, and talked of 
" the dear cottage where so many joyful hours had 
flown." Well, this thatching of hovels is the cus- 
tom of the country. Women, more than all, are 
the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fasci- 
nated, they fascinate. They see through Claude- 
Lorraines. And how dare any one, if he could, 
pluck away the coulisses, stage effects, and cere- 
monies, by which they live ? Too pathetic, too 
pitiable, is the region of affection, and its atmos- 
phere always liable to mirage. 

We are not very much to blame for our bad 
marriages. We live amid hallucinations ; and this 
especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all 
are tripped up first or last. But the mighty Mother 
w^ho had been so sly with us, as if she felt that 
she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the 
Pandora-box of marriage some deep and serious 
benefits, and some great joys. We find a delight 
in the beauty and happiness of children, that makes 
the heart too big for the body. In the worst- 
assorted connections there is ever some mixture 
of true marriage. Teague and his jade get some 
just relations of mutual respect, kindly observation, 
and fostering of each other, learn something, and 
would carry themselves wiselier, if they were now 
to begin. 



280 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

'Tis fine for us to point at one or another fine 
madman, as if there were any exempts. The 
scholar in his Hbrary is none. I, who have all 
my life heard any number of orations and debates, 
read poems and miscellaneous books, conversed 
with many geniuses, am still the victim of any new 
page ; and, if Marmaduke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, 
or any other, invent a new style or mythology, I 
fancy that the world will be all brave and right, if 
dressed in these colors, which I had not thought of. 
Then at once I will daub with this new paint ; but 
it will not stick. 'Tis like the cement which the 
peddler sells at the door ; he makes broken crock- 
ery hold with it, but you can never buy of him a 
bit of the cement which will make it hold when he 
is gone. 

Men who make themselves felt in the world avail 
themselves of a certain fate in their constitution, 
which they know how to use. But they never 
deeply interest us, unless they lift a corner of the 
curtain, or betray never so slightly their penetration 
of what is behind it. 'Tis the charm of practical 
men, that outside of their practicality are a cer- 
tain poetry and play, as if they led the good horse 
Power by the bridle, and preferred to walk, though 
they can ride so fiercely. Bonaparte is intellectual, 
as well as Caesar; and the best soldiers, sea-captains, 
and railway men have a gentleness, when oft* duty ; 
a good-natured admission that there are illusions, 



ILLUSIONS. 281 

and who shall say that he is not their sport ? We 
stigmatize the cast-iron fellows, who cannot so de- 
tach themselves, as " dragon-ridden," " thunder- 
stricken," and fools of fate, with whatever powers 
endowed. 

Since our tuition is through emblems and indi- 
rections, 'tis well to know that there is method in 
it, a fixed scale, and rank above rank in the phan- 
tasms. We begin low with coarse masks, and rise 
to the most subtle and beautiful. The red men told 
Columbus, " they had an herb which took away fa- 
tigue ; " but he found the illusion of " arriving from 
the east at the Indies " more composing to his lofty 
spirit than any tobacco. Is not our faith in the 
impenetrability of matter more sedative than nar- 
cotics ? You play with jackstraws, balls, bowls, 
horse and gun, estates and pohtics ; but there are 
finer games before you. Is not time a pretty toy ? 
Life will show you masks that are worth all your 
3arnivals. Yonder mountain must migrate into 
your mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous blur 
in Orion, " the portentous year of Mizar and Al- 
cor," must come down and be dealt with in your 
household thought. What if you shall come to dis- 
cern that the play and playground of all this pom- 
pous history are radiations from yourself, and that 
the sun borrows his beams ? What terrible ques- 
tions we are learning to ask ! The former men be- 
lieved in magic, by which temples, cities, and men 



282 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. 
We are coming on the secret of a magic which 
sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and 
beliefs which they and their fathers held and were 
il'amed upon. 

There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of 
the passions, and the structural, beneficent illusions 
of sentiment and of the intellect. There is the 
illusion of love, which attributes to the beloved 
person all which that person shares with his or her 
family, sex, age, or condition, nay, with the human 
mind itself. 'Tis these which the lover loves, and 
Anna Matilda gets the credit of them. As if one 
shut up always in a tower, with one window, 
through which the face of heaven and earth could 
be seen, should fancy that all the marvels he beheld 
belonged to that window. There is the illusion of 
time, which is very deep ; who has disposed of it ? 
or come to the conviction that what seems the sue- 
cession of thought is only the distribution of wholes 
into causal series? The intellect sees that every 
atom carries the whole of Nature ; that the mind 
opens to omnipotence ; that, in the endless striving 
and ascents, the metamorphosis is entire, so that the 
soul doth not know itself in its own act, when that 
act is perfected. There is illusion that shall de- 
ceive even the elect. There is illusion that shall 
deceive even the performer of the miracle. Though 
he make his body, he denies that he makes it. 



ILLUSIONS. 283 

riiougli the world exist from thought, thought is 
daunted in presence of the world. One after the 
other we accept the mental laws, still resisting those 
which follow, which however must be accepted. 
But all our concessions only compel us to new pro- 
fusion. And what avails it that science has come 
to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, 
and the material world as hypothetical, and withal 
our pretension of property and even of self-hood 
are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our 
thoughts are not finalities; but the incessant flow- 
ing and ascension reach these also, and each 
thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is 
yielding to a larger generalization ? 

With such volatile elements to work in, 'tis no 
wonder if our estimates are loose and floatino*. We 
must work and affirm, but we have no guess of the 
value of what we say or do. The cloud is now 
as big as your hand, and now it covers a county. 
That story of Thor, who was set to di'ain the 
drinking-horn in Asgard, and to wrestle with the 
old woman, and to run with the runner Lok, and 
presently found that he had been drinking up the 
sea, and wrestling with Time, and racing with 
Thought, describes us who are contending, amid 
these seeming trifles, with the supreme energies of 
Nature. We fancy we have fallen into bad com- 
pany and squalid condition, low debts, shoe-bills, 
broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, butcher's meat, 



284 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

sugar, milk, and coal. ' Set me some great task, 
ye gods ! and I will show my spirit.' ' Not so,' 
says the good Heaven ; * plod and plough, vamp 
your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring ; great 
aiFairs and the best wine by and by.' Well, 'tis all 
phantasm ; and if we weave a yard of tape in all 
humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we 
shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some 
galaxy which we braided, and that the threads were 
Time and Nature. 

We cannot write the order of the variable winds. 
How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods 
and susceptibility ? Yet they differ as all and noth- 
ing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which 
our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which 
coops us in ; we cannot even see what or where our 
stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital 
facts of human life are hidden from our eyes. Sud- 
denly the mist rolls up, and reveals them, and we 
think how much good time is gone, that might 
have been saved, had any hint of these things been 
shown. A sudden rise in the road shows us the 
system of mountains, and all the summits, which 
have been just as near us all the year, but quite out 
of mind. But these alternations are not without 
their order, and we are parties to our various for- 
tune. If life seem a succession of dreams, yet 
poetic justice is done in dreams also. The visions 
of good men are good ; it is the undisciplined will 



ILLUSIONS. 285 

that is whipped with bad thoughts and bad fortunes. 
When we break the laws, we lose our hold on the 
central reality. Like sick men in hospitals, we 
change only from bed to bed, from one folly to an- 
other ; and it cannot signify much what becomes of 
such castaways, — wailing, stupid, comatose crea- 
tures, — lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing 
of life to the nothing of death. 

In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for 
stays and foundations. There is none but a strict 
and faithful dealing at home, and a severe barring 
out of all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever 
games are played with us, we must play no games 
with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last 
honesty and truth. I look upon the simple and 
childish virtues of veracity and honesty as the root 
of all that is sublime in character. S]Deak as you 
think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. 
I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my 
word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot 
be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the 
iclat in the universe. This reality is the founda- 
tion of friendship, religion, poetry, and art. At the 
top or at the bottom of all illusions, I set the cheat 
which still leads us to work and live for appear- 
ances, in spite of our conviction, in all sane hours, 
that it is what we really are that avails with fr-iends, 
with strangers, and with fate or fortune. 

One would think from the talk of men, that 



286 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

riches and poverty were a great matter ; and oiir 
civilization mainly respects it. But the Indians say, 
that they do not think the white man with his brow 
of care, always toiling, afraid of heat and cold, and 
keeping within doors, has any advantage of them. 
The permanent 'interest of every man is, never to 
be in a false position, but to have the weight of 
Nature to back him in all that he does. Riches 
and poverty are a thick or thin costume ; and our 
life — the life of all of us — identical. For we 
transcend the circumstance continually, and taste 
the real quality of existence ; as in our employ- 
ments, which only differ in the manipulations, but 
express the same laws ; or in our thoughts, which 
wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams. We see 
God face to face every hour, and know the savor 
of Nature. 

The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and 
Xenophanes measured their force on this problem 
of identity. Diogenes of Apollonia said, that un 
less the atoms were made of one stuff, they could 
never blend and act with one another. But the 
Hindoos, in their sacred writings, express the live- 
liest feeling, both of the essential identity, and of 
that illusion which they conceive variety to be 
" The notions, ' I am^ and ' This is mine,^ which 
influence mankind, are but delusions of the mothei 
of the world. Dispel, O Lord of all creatures ! the 
conceit of knowledge which proceeds from igno 



ILLUSIONS. 287 

ranee." And the beatitude of man they hold to he 
in beinof freed from fascination. 

The intellect is stimulated by the statement of 
truth in a trope, and the will by clothing the laws 
of life in illusions. But the unities of Truth and 
of Right are not broken by the disguise. Theru 
need never be any confusion in these. In a 
crowded life of many parts and performers, on 
a stage of nations, or in the obscurest hamlet in 
Maine or California, the same elements offer the 
same choices to each new comer, and, according to 
his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute Nature. 
It would be hard to put more mental and moral 
philosophy than the Persians have thrown into a 
sentence : — 

"Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise: 
Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice." 

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the uni- 
verse. All is system and gradation. Every god 
is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal 
enters the hall of the firmament : there is he alone 
with them alone, they pouring on him benedictions 
and gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones. 
On the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms 
of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd 
which sways this way and that, and whose move- 
ment and doings he must obey : he fancies himself 
poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd di'ives 



288 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

lilther and thither, now furiously commanding this 
thing to be done, now that. What is he that he 
should resist their will, and think or act for him- 
self? Every moment, new changes, and new show- 
ers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. And 
when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears, and 
the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting 
aromid him on their thrones, — they alone with 
him alone. 



THX END. 



